The global justice movement and

struggles over knowledge

Sky Croeser

This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of the

University of Western Australia
School of Social and Cultural Studies
Discipline of Political Science and International Relations
2009

Abstract:
This dissertation argues that knowledge is a vital site of contestation for the
global justice movement. In shaping scientific and technological developments
actors alter political, economic, and social systems, just as these in turn alter
knowledge systems. Struggles over knowledge are therefore vital to the work of
the global justice movement. This thesis is elaborated through examination of
two case studies: the opposition to genetically-modified crops in India, and the
digital liberties movement. The former exemplifies some of the ways in which
movements in the Global South have struggled over knowledge by calling for an
end to the theft of their biodiversity and for traditional knowledge systems to be
accorded

legitimacy. The

emerging

digital

liberties

movement,

based

predominantly but not exclusively in the Global North, addresses attempts by

government and business elites to (re)gain control over information and
communications technologies. These attempts create threats to the ability of the
global justice movement to organise and communicate. Both of these
movements make vital and parallel contributions to the global justice
movement's attempts to build a more democratic and diverse world.
Examination of these contributions extends the existing literature in three
important respects. Firstly, it demonstrates the vital role that struggles over
knowledge play in the global justice movement by exploring commonalities in
the analysis and work of movements previously seen as disparate. Secondly, it
argues for the value of a complex conceptualisation of the way in which
movements, groups, and individuals relate and contribute to the global justice
movement. Thirdly, it provides a critical analysis of the emergence of the digital
liberties movement, and adds to existing work on the Indian opposition to
genetically modified crops.

Table of Contents
Acronyms..............................................................................................................v
Acknowledgements..............................................................................................vi
Introduction...........................................................................................................1
The thesis.........................................................................................................2
Case studies.....................................................................................................4
Theories and concepts.....................................................................................7
Methodology...................................................................................................11
Limitations of this study..................................................................................16
Structure.........................................................................................................17
Chapter One
Neoliberalism, the global justice movement and struggles over knowledge......20
Introduction.....................................................................................................20
Section one: knowledge and power...............................................................22
Section two: the Information Age and neoliberal globalisation.......................28
Section three: the global justice movement and knowledge systems............34
The emergence of the global justice movement........................................35
The global justice movement and knowledge systems..............................45
Section four: the ongoing struggle to control knowledge...............................52
Enclosure of the commons.........................................................................53
Surveillance................................................................................................56
Resistance to peer-produced knowledge...................................................57
Conclusion......................................................................................................58
Chapter Two
Opposition to genetically modified crops in India: who knows best when it
comes to agriculture?..........................................................................................61
Introduction.....................................................................................................61
Section one: the opposition to genetically modified crops in India.................64
Section two: there is no resistance without alternatives..............................79
Section three: complexities and contradictions..............................................88
Conclusion......................................................................................................99
Chapter Three
The digital liberties movement: the digital is political........................................102
Introduction...................................................................................................102
Section one: defining the digital liberties movement....................................104
Section two: (re)taking the digital..................................................................111
The digital revolution................................................................................112
The relationship between the real and the virtual....................................113
Shifts in knowledge production.................................................................116
(Re)gaining control over information and communications technologies 116
National security, law and order, and surveillance...................................118
Corporate surveillance.............................................................................120
Protecting intellectual property..............................................................121
Controlling knowledge..............................................................................124
Section three: the emergence of the digital liberties movement..................126
Roots in previous movements and communities.....................................126
Hackers....................................................................................................128

The free/libre and open source software movement...............................130

Landmarks in the emergence of the digital liberties movement..............135
Eldred vs. Ashcroft...............................................................................135
DeCSS.................................................................................................136
Diebold Election Systems vs. the Internet...........................................137
Grey Tuesday.......................................................................................138
09F9.....................................................................................................139
Net Neutrality.......................................................................................139
Anti-Clean Feed activism in Australia..................................................141
Pirate Bay trial......................................................................................142
Common themes......................................................................................143
Conclusion....................................................................................................147
Chapter Four
The global justice movement and struggles over knowledge...........................149
Introduction...................................................................................................149
Section one: mapping the movements.........................................................151
The Indian opposition to genetically modified crops and the global justice
movement.................................................................................................151
The digital liberties movement and the global justice movement............160
Section two: struggles over knowledge and contributions to the global justice
movement.....................................................................................................171
Democratic control over key technologies...............................................172
Peer-based knowledge systems..............................................................178
Preserving diversity..................................................................................185
Resisting enclosure .................................................................................189
Conclusion....................................................................................................293
Conclusion........................................................................................................196
Contributions to the field...............................................................................199
Directions for further research......................................................................202
Bibliography......................................................................................................205

Acronyms
CCTV
DLM
DMCA
DRM
EFF
ESG
FFII
F/LOSS
FSF
GATT
GEAC
GJM
GM
GMO
GNU
GPL
GREEN Foundation
ICRA
ICTs
IMF
IP
IPR
ISP
KRRS
MNC
MPAA
NGO
NSM
PGA
RFID
RIAA
TRIPS
TSMO
WIPO
WSF
WTO

Closed circuit television

Digital liberties movement
Digital Millennium Copyright Act
Digital rights management
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Environment Support Group
Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure
Free/libre and open source software
Free Software Foundation
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
Genetic Engineering Approval Committee
Global justice movement
Genetically modified/genetic modification
Genetically modified organism
GNU's Not Unix
General Public License
Genetic Research, Ecology, Energy, and Nutrition
Foundation
Institute for Cultural Research and Action
Information and communication technologies
International Monetary Fund
Intellectual property
Intellectual property rights
Internet service provider
Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha (Karnataka State
Farmers' Association)
Multinational corporation
Motion Picture Association of America
Non-governmental organisation
New social movement
People's Global Action
Radio frequency identification
Recording Industry Association of America
Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual
Property Rights
Transnational social movement organisation
World Intellectual Property Organization
World Social Forum
World Trade Organization

vi

Acknowledgements
First and foremost, thanks go to my primary supervisor, Dr. Chen Jie. He has
continually challenged my ideas and helped me to think more deeply about the
issues addressed in this dissertation. I am tremendously grateful for his
unflagging support, encouragement, and humour throughout my candidature,
and couldn't have wished for a better supervisor.
Thanks also go to the staff of UWA's Discipline of Political Science and
International Relations for their help and support over the years, particularly to
my secondary supervisor, Roderic Pitty, for his helpful suggestions and to Linley
Hill for her encouragement and her almost-magical ability to find the right forms.
Participation in conferences and fieldwork has enriched this project and allowed
me to gain valuable experience and feedback on my work. The Dean's
Postgraduate Travel Award facilitated my attendance at the 2005 International
Society for Third Sector Research conference in Bangkok. The Patrick O'Brien
Political Science Graduate Internship Award allowed me to spend several
weeks working with the GREEN Foundation and Janastu in Bangalore in 2007.
Thanks go to the sponsors of these awards, as well as to the organisations that
hosted me. Thanks also go to the anonymous reviewers and conference
audiences who provided me with feedback on papers presented at the 2005
ISTR conference, the 2008 and 2009 Australian Political Studies Association
conferences, and on my article in the 2007 edition of Agenda.
My research would have been much poorer had I not had the opportunity to talk
to activists in India and Sweden, and at the Karachi and Nairobi World Social
Forums. I can't begin to thank everyone who helped me by discussing their
work, their lives, and their ideas. Special thanks, however, must go to Akshay
and Suresh Heblikar, Prasad, Hari Ram, TB Dinesh, Kavita Philip, Ravi
Srinivasan, Raheema Begum, Chukki Nanjundaswamy, and Shyla and HP
Dwarakanath.
vii

I would not be who I am, and this dissertation would not be what it is, had it not
been for my family. I cannot count the ways in which I am indebted to them: for
the discussions about politics and ethics, the games of with my
grandfather, the stern talks and dolmades from my grandmother, the
proofreading, the support and, most of all, for the love. Many thanks to the
collection of Croesers, especially Eve, Roselt and Kyle, and to the full set of
Gregoriadises: , , Strati, Lorraine, Cassandra, Nastassia, and
Byron.
Many friends and loved ones have sustained me throughout this project. They
have debated important ideas with me, proofread, made tea, and provided
much-needed support in a thousand ways, large and small. Special thanks go
to Jason Sharbanee, Nathalie Latter, Kale Dyer, Jarrad Robb, Lisa Max,
Elizabeth Przywolnik, Tim Highfield, Jessica McLeod, Filip Wijkstrm, Chloe
Britton, Jamie Bainbridge, Jess Porter, Ben Griffin, and Balram and Jyothi
Choudhary (and their family).
Many thanks go to my colleagues at the Bluestocking Institute: Shae Garwood,
Christalla Yakinthou, Liza Beinart, and Kate Riddell. They have been there for
every step of this journey, and have shown me the way forward whenever I was
lost.
Lev Lafayette, David Glance, and Cameron Patrick have helped to provide me
with laptops at various points throughout my candidature. Clearly, dissertations
are hard on laptops as well as on candidates, and I am very grateful for their
assistance.
This dissertation was written on laptops running Ubuntu, Open Office, Firefox,
and Zotero. I am grateful to the communities that create and maintain these
programs, as well as to other users of the forums who have answered my
questions and helped me to get everything running smoothly.

viii

Introduction
In 1999, thousands of activists turned out to protest against the World Trade
Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference in Seattle in a series of events that
the left heralded as the coming out party for a global movement (Burbach
2001, 99). These protests represented only a tiny proportion of the global justice
movement (GJM), built on many years of organising throughout the world (and
particularly in the Global South 1). Until the 1999 protests in Seattle, there was a
growing sense among sections of both the right- and the left-wing in the Global
North that neoliberal capitalism had defeated all comers. With the collapse of
state socialism as a viable alternative for much of the world and the end of the
Cold War, neoliberal globalisation seemed to have no serious competitors, and
[a]s far as the powerful were concerned, there was no opposition to capitalism,
no alternative to the 'free' market (Notes from Nowhere 2003e, 500). On the
left, many argued that the identity politics of the 1970s and following decades
had fractured opposition to capitalism to the point where it had become useless.
Anticapitalist protests of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries
changed this, leading to a flurry of excitement about a new web of global
activism, a movement that brought struggles from around the world together
into an overlapping and interconnected movement of movements. Other
developments, especially the World Social Forum (WSF) of 2001 and those that
followed, have strengthened the sense that a global resistance to neoliberal
capitalism has emerged, a unified (if multiplicitous) commitment to building
alternatives.
The obstacles faced by those attempting to challenge capitalism's current
incarnation are significant, although the recent global financial crisis has gone
some way towards weakening the idea that neoliberal globalisation is the
pinnacle of economic, social, and political organisation. Political elites around
the world have begun to argue, as Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has,
1

Use of the terms 'Global North' and 'Global South' to designate broad global divisions of
wealth and power is not ideal, and does not map perfectly onto the geopolitical realities of
the world. However, these terms are preferable to the alternatives and are therefore used
throughout this analysis.

that the great neo-liberal experiment of the past 30 years has failed (2009).
However, the power structures and institutions built up over previous decades
are unlikely to disappear overnight, and it is doubtful whether the more sceptical
language being employed by centrists such as Rudd and Obama towards
neoliberalism will translate into deep structural change. Insofar as such change
is allowed and promoted by political elites, it is likely to be in large part a result
of pressure by social movements and other actors outside the political and
economic establishment. The GJM is likely, therefore, to remain one of the
primary actors in the search to find alternatives to neoliberal globalisation.

The thesis
The thesis of this dissertation is that knowledgeincluding that embodied in
science and technologyis a vital site of contestation in the struggle between
actors working to strengthen neoliberal capitalism and those within the GJM.
Both neoliberal capitalism and the resistance to it rely on information and
communications technologies (ICTs) and related technologies, although in
different ways. In shaping scientific and technological developments, and the
way in which these developments are understood and approached, actors alter
political, economic, and social systems, just as these systems alter the course
of scientific and technological change. The view that science and technology
can be and are shaped by forces other than their own internal logic is not a new
one: what is new here is the argument that knowledge is a vital battleground in
the struggle to shape globalisation.
This dissertation is particularly concerned with the contest between neoliberal
capitalism and the GJM, which can also be seen as a struggle between two
forms of globalisation: globalisation from above, and globalisation from below.
Falk defines globalisation from above as, reflecting the collaboration between
leading states and the main agents of capital formation. In opposition to this,
globalisation from below, consists of an array of transnational social forces
animated by environmental concerns, human rights, hostility to patriarchy, and a
vision of human community based on the unity of diverse cultures seeking an
end to poverty, oppression, humiliation, and collective violence (Falk 1993, 39).
3

I will argue throughout this thesis that struggles over knowledge are part of
elites' efforts to further globalisation from above, and activists' efforts to bring
about globalisation from below.
Struggles over knowledge take multiple forms, ranging from attempts to
reconfigure particular technologies through to attempts to change how we
understand and control the production of knowledge itself. These forms are
interrelated. To take what may seem like a trivial example, the debate over
whether computer owners should be able to copy copyrighted material on CDs
and DVDs is linked to much broader debates over whether information can be
owned in the same way as physical property, and the extent to which amateur
cultural production should be considered legitimate and valuable. Similarly,
attempts to implement technologies that would allow companies to prevent
replanting of patented seeds bring up questions about the role of communities
in the Global South in developing agricultural biodiversity and the institutional
possibilities for recognising this role. Struggles over knowledge therefore
involve complex relationships between contests over particular technologies
and much deeper questions regarding control over the production and
dissemination of knowledge.
This thesis examines existing attempts that are underway by movements
throughout the world to (re)gain democratic control over knowledge. Although
such concerns may seem post-materialist in the extreme, movements in the
Global South have been among the first to take up the banner by calling for an
end to the theft of their biodiversity and for indigenous knowledge systems to be
accorded legitimacy. There are also other strands of activism contributing to the
GJM, including the DLM, which have begun to address threats to the ability of
those working towards globalisation from below to organise and communicate.
These threats come primarily from governments and corporations, and are
spurred on by different motivations, primarily national security in the case of the
former (as part of the United States' War on Terror and control of information
flow within and over the borders of undemocratic states like China and Burma),
and, in the case of the latter, in order to prevent piracy of copyrighted material.
Currently, the efforts of activists engaged in struggles over knowledge remain
4

disconnected and largely unrecognised. If the GJM is to have any chance of

achieving its goals, these struggles must gain a higher priority and connect up
with each other. This thesis makes a novel contribution to the study of political
struggle by bringing attention to the common analysis and goals of movements
previously seen as disparate.

Case studies
The first case that I will discuss is the movement against genetically modified
(GM) crops in Karnataka, India, with occasional reference to anti-GM activism in
other parts of India. This movement has connections to other activists and
groups opposing GM crops within India and in other countries, including
Navdanya, a group founded by Vandana Shiva. However, the movement in
Karnataka is relatively self-contained, and has unique characteristics not shared
by other anti-GM movements. Most prominent of these is the domination of the
movement by the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha (Karnataka State Farmers'
Association, KRRS) and the resulting discourse that places opposition to GM
crops within a Gandhian framework, centring the producer rather than the
consumer or environmental issues. In light of the focus in this dissertation on
the struggle over globalisation, Karnataka's juxtaposition of the booming ICT,
biotechnology, and

business process outsourcing

industries based

in

Bangalore2 and the anti-GM movement is a microcosm of the larger struggle

between different visions of globalisation.
This movement is also particularly useful for my analysis because it highlights
the complex way in which the GJM is constituted from struggles throughout the
world. As I will argue in Chapter Four, the Indian opposition to GM crops has an
iconic role within the GJM. However, closer examination of the relationship
between the Indian movement and the GJM destabilises any notion that the
former is simply a part of the GJM. This case study demonstrates that even
movements considered to form the core of the GJM may have a fragile and
tenuous relationship with the broader GJM, as the Indian movement does.
Examination of this relationship allows a better understanding of the GJM as
2

As of 2008/2009, there are efforts underway to relocate much of this work to Mysore, as
Bangalore's infrastructure has been strained by the growth of these industries.

built from and through a diverse range of overlapping struggles, rather than as a
movement with a clearly defined core and peripheral membership.
At first, my research on the Indian opposition to GM crops focused
predominantly on those who were directly involved in protests, lobbying,
research, or other activities aimed at preventing the entry into and spread of GM
crops in India. The KRRS has received widespread coverage within India, and
some coverage overseas, for its anti-GM protests, particularly the destruction of
test fields of Bt cotton in the late 1990s. Other organisations, including
Greenpeace India and the Environmental Support Group (ESG), have been
involved in researching and publicising GM issues as well as lobbying state and
federal governments. Professionals, particularly academics, journalists, and
lawyers have played a significant role in the opposition to GM crops, both
through their work and through outside activism. A wide range of individuals and
organisations play a role in the movement's attempts to convince institutions,
farmers, and consumers of the need to ban or avoid the use of GM crops.
Over time it became clear that this work, and these actors, constituted only a
small part of the anti-GM crop movement's activities and participants. MD
Nanjundaswamy, the late leader of the KRRS, has written that there is no
sense in dividing resistance and alternatives, since none of them can take place
without the other (1998b, 157). Although the most visible section of the KRRS
and other groups' activities are well-publicised direct actions, the vast majority
of the work carried out by movement participants is not a direct opposition to
GM crops, but rather the promotion of sustainable, organic, low-input farming,
and the use of indigenous seed varieties. Groups such as the Institute for
Cultural Research and Action (ICRA), the Genetic Research, Ecology, Energy,
and Nutrition (GREEN) Foundation, and small-scale farmers' organic produce
groups relate their promotion of organic farming to the resistance to GM crops,
and are understood by others to be a part of this struggle. The movement
opposing GM crops is, therefore, also in large part a movement promoting
organic, sustainable farming. In doing so, movement participants are contesting
claims that the technologies of the Green Revolution and biotechnology are the
only way to feed India's growing population, questioning the scientific basis of
6

these claims and calling for indigenous and appropriate technologies and
knowledge systems to be recognised as legitimate.
Like the Indian movement, the digital liberties movement (DLM) involves a
complex web of actors and links together issues that at first glance do not seem
directly related. Movement participants make connections between the use of
proprietary software, government controls on and surveillance of the Internet,
copyright law and digital rights management, linking them through a frame that
opposes restrictions on the free flow of digital information. As is the case with
the Indian movement, participants match their opposition (in this case, to these
restrictions) with an inventive exploration of alternatives, including creative
commons licenses3, Free/Libre and Open Source Software (F/LOSS), and
community-run wireless networks. Movement participants are often informed by
the ideals of liberalism, libertarianism and anarchism, and the freedom to
exchange and build upon existing knowledge and cultural content is seen as an
important aspect of a free society.
However, unlike in the case of the Indian movement, the DLM is not strongly
rooted in a particular geographic place. While the movement in Karnataka
draws on experiences and ideas from other areas, it is strongly informed by the
historic, cultural, and political context of southern India. On the other hand,
although the DLM is informed and shaped by the particularities of place (most
notably the United States), it is rooted in online spaces and built on and through
online cultures and communities. Virtual space is not the same as geographical
space, but it shares many of the same characteristicsincluding its increasing
interlinkage with other places and spaces. For this reason I have not drawn the
bounds around a particular geographical section of the DLM, but rather have
focused on its online presence.
My interest in the DLM is twofold. Firstly, because it is not conventionally seen
as holding a position of importance within the GJM, it allows further exploration
of how the GJM is constituted. Although the DLM is far less prominent than the
3

These licenses allow content creators to easily modify the copyright provisions on their work,
such as by allowing non-commercial uses.

Indian anti-GM movement within the GJM, it nevertheless makes vital

contributions to the GJM's work. This demonstrates, once again, the importance
of diverse and decentralised struggles to furthering the GJM's attempts to
reshape globalisation. Secondly, I believe that the DLM is one of the most
important social movements to have emerged over recent decades because the
issues which the DLM is addressing are central to the structure and work of the
GJM. It is therefore vital that the DLM receives increased attention within social
movement scholarship.

Theories and concepts

This thesis draws and builds on the significant literature that attempts to
theorise social movements, which includes the literature which focuses
specifically on new social movements (NSMs) and transnational social
movements. This thesis draws on both the European, or new social
movements, approach, and the North American perspective, sometimes split
into political process and resource mobilisation theories. In doing so, I have
been mindful of several critiques of this body of work. The first of these critiques
notes the inward-looking nature of a significant proportion of the social
movement literature. Flacks argues that there is a large and ever-expanding
body of work that scholars of social movements feel the need to relate to, work
within or synthesise, but that this work is currently more concerned with
establishing, critiquing, or refining 'paradigms' than with creating theory that is
relevant outside the body of literature itself (2005, 7-8). Flacks recognises the
value of social movement scholarship, but also argues that there are important
reasons to critique the amount of time and energy that scholars of social
movements are devoting to the critique of new social movement and North
American theoretical perspectives. The most important of these is the
decreasing relevance of this body of work to activists themselves (Flacks 2005).
This critique has also been voiced by others, including Cox and Nilson (2000),
particularly as it relates to the relevance of social movement literature to
activists.

 second important critique of the social movement literature is its focus on

activism in the Global North, which has been voiced by a number of scholars
including Foweraker (1995) and Cox and Nilson (2000). Increasingly, the focus
on Europe and America is shifting in social movement scholarship, with more
work looking at movements in the Global South. This is particularly case with
the literature on transnational social movements, and edited collections on both
social movements generally and transnational social movements in particular
increasingly include a more diverse range of case studies (cf. Richter, Berking &
Mller-Schmid 2006; Meyer, Whittier & Robnett 2002), moving beyond the
literature's previous focus on the North. There remains a tendency, however, to
treat Southern movements as exotic or in some ways fundamentally different
from Northern movements, which continue to define the norm in social
movement studies. In examining the movement against GM crops in India, I
have attempted to avoid romanticising the movement or its participants.
In order to avoid either taking for granted the assumptions of literature based on
empirical studies of Northern movements or allowing the reification of existing
social movement scholarship paradigms to dominate my analysis, I have been
guided in this work by the concerns voiced by activists. This does not mean a
rejection of valuable work done by previous scholars of social movements and
transnational social movements. On the contrary, concepts developed over
previous decades of work form the backbone of the study. The first and most
important contribution which I draw upon is the social movement literature's
establishment of social movements as distinct phenomena. The novelty and
importance of this contribution, as well as the complexity of social movements
as a conceptual entity, is sometimes overlooked now that the term has gained
widespread acceptance.
Defining and mapping social movements continues to be a complicated task.
Charles Tilly defines a social movement as a sustained, organized public effort
making collective claims on target authorities that uses a particular repertoire of
tactics on behalf of a group of people that claim to be worthy, united, numerous,
and committed (2004, 3-4). To this, other notable scholars in the field have also
noted the presence of network structures (della Porta & Diani 1999, 159) and
9

collective identity (della Porta & Diani 1999, 24) as defining features of social
movements. Transnational social movements are those that are linked across
country boundaries that have the capacity to generate coordinated and
sustained social mobilisation in more than one country to publicly influence
social change (Khagram, Riker, & Sikkink 2002, 8), as the GJM is. Social
movements are not static: they are fluid networks of individuals and
organisations who come together for movement activities and may participate
only rarely. While this gives adequate grounds for deciding what is a movement
and what is not (for example, a single non-governmental organisation, or NGO,
is not a social movement, while a collection of NGOs and individuals may be), it
leaves many issues unresolved.
The most pressing of these is the question of where to draw the boundaries
around any particular movement. Is an individual a movement participant if they
come to a single protest? Are feminist peace activists part of the feminist
movement or the anti-war movement? Are radical feminists and liberal feminists
part of the same movement? Which movements are part of the GJM? Social
movements are not just fluid, they are decidedly messy. They frequently
overlap, and have blurry borders. When it comes to defining the movements in
this dissertation, I have taken the defining characteristics described above as a
starting point. I consider actors to be part of the same movement if they have a
shared frame of analysis and a common discourse, and if they are connected
through formal or informal networks and activities. At the same time, I have
attempted to retain a sense of the movement concerned as heterogeneous and
fluid.
The literature on framing has also provided valuable concepts for understanding
how and why inter- and intra-movement coalitions are built. Building on a
concept initially applied to social movements by Goffman (1974), Benford and
Snow's (cf. Snow et al. 1986; Snow and Benford 1988) work on collective action
frames has been a valuable addition to the field of social movement studies.
Benford and Snow define collective action frames as action-oriented sets of
beliefs and meanings that inspire and legitimate the activities and campaigns of
a social movement organization (2000, 614), which can also be applied to
10

social movement participants more generally. Benford and Snow emphasise

that collective action frames are not pre-existing, but rather are a result of
interactive, discursive processes (2000, 615). The alignment, or lack of
alignment, of frames within and between movements plays an important role in
explaining the relationship between each of the case-study movements and the
GJM as a whole.
Finally, I have drawn on the injunctions by both Cox and Nilsen (2000, 430) and
Flacks (2005) to recognise activists as playing a role as theorists. The challenge
here is not so much to bring together the political process, resource mobilisation
and new social movement traditions, but to find the ways in which the insights of
these traditions can be combined with the work and priorities of movement
scholars. Such an effort also benefits from Gramsci's analysis of the role of
organic intellectuals, as set out in The Modern Prince (1967). The work of
Naomi Klein, Amory Starr, Subcomandante Marcos, MD Nanjundaswamy, as
well as collectives such as Crimethinc, the Midnight Notes Collective and Notes
from Nowhere, provides a vital insight into how activists themselves conceive of
and theorise the movements which they are involved in. Similarly, my work on
the DLM has drawn extensively on work by academic-activists such as
Lawrence Lessig, Yochai Benkler, and James Boyle. These bodies of work
should not only be the subject of study, analysed as movement texts, but should
also be acknowledged as a source of useful frameworks in the attempt to
understand social movements, as it is in the case of academic-activists such as
Naomi Klein and Amory Starr. These writers frequently draw on a large body of
first-hand experience and take part in theoretical discussions in both face-toface contexts and online. This is because for the most part, circulation of
information must be accompanied by circulation of analysison web pages this
can become one-sided, but in email especially in the usual form of mailing lists
and conferences, access is free and all sides have the possibility of articulating
their own position. These lists constitute a kind of alternative, oppositional
community of discussion and debate (Cleaver 1999, 11). Arguably, the need to
develop relevant and empirically-validated theory is all the more urgent when it
relates to one's life project, as is the case with activists' work.

11

As well as drawing extensively on social movement literature, this dissertation

relies heavily on the extensive work surrounding the relationship between
knowledge and political and economic power. This body of work is extensive,
and stretches from the realms of science and technology studies to literature
that attempts to theorise the Information Age. Science and technology studies
are built on the concept of technoscience, which links science and technology
within a single matrix and situates this matrix within the context of other social
and cultural power structures. This framework has primarily been developed by
Haraway (1997) and Latour and Woolgar (1986). The work of Haraway,
Woolgar, Latour, and others in the field explores the multiple interstices of
power that shape the production of knowledge, and the way in which scientific
paradigms are imbricated with the maintenance or transformation of political
and economic power. The literature on the Information Age is, to an extent, built
on this earlier work. Manuel Castells' seminal three volume work, The
Information Age, is an expansive discussion of what he sees as a fundamental
transformation of the capitalist mode of production (and, hence, of social and
political life) tied to the ICT revolution. Taken together, this body of literature
allows connections to be built between the contemporary form of global
capitalism and knowledge as embodied in science, technology, and the flow of
information.

Methodology
This thesis relies heavily on primary source material in various forms. During
2006, I spent three months in Karnataka interviewing activists, journalists,
academics, and opponents of the anti-GM movement. Interviews were semistructured, with questions tailored to the particular position of the interviewee
within the movement. Initially, academics studying the movement were
contacted, and further interview subjects were contacted by a process of
snowball sampling. There were several biases involved in this process,
particularly a tendency towards interview subjects who were perceived by
others to be in leadership positions within the movement, and towards those
who spoke English. I repeatedly requested that I be introduced to those at the
grassroots level of the movement, and those likely to be marginalised within the
12

movement, but my contact with these movement participants remained

somewhat limited. I have therefore attempted to balance the material gathered
from movement participants with critical perspectives from outside the
movement, including those of academics, journalists, critics of the movement,
and farmers who know of but are not (or are no longer) involved in the
movement.
During my period of fieldwork, I had the opportunity to observe movement
activities, including recruitment drives, meetings, and protests. The majority of
my time in this regard was spent with the KRRS, but I also attended events and
meetings held by other organisations, including the ESG. In 2007, I spent a
further five weeks in Bangalore working with the GREEN Foundation, a NGO
involved in promoting domestic crop biodiversity and sustainable, organic,
farming. Field observations have been further supplemented by access to
movement publications, including websites, press releases, brochures, minutes,
emails, training manuals, and books produced by actors within the movement.
As well as the primary sources for the Indian opposition to GM crops, there is a
significant body of secondary literature that discusses the movement within the
context of the emergence of farmers' movements in India. Much of this literature
focuses on the KRRS, and falls within the work by scholars such as Muzaffar
Assadi, Gail Omvedt, and Tom Brass, on the farmers' movements that came to
prominence in India during the 1980s, and conceptualises the opposition to GM
crops primarily either within the broader framework of farmers' struggles to
attain economic concessions from urban elites, or as part of a shift towards a
style of protest associated with NSMs. Other work on the Indian movement has
conceptualised it as part of a new kind of transnational activism, positioning it
within the framework of emerging coalitions of farmers and other global justice
activists (cf. Featherstone 2003). The work on this movement is also
contextualised within the literature on the anti-GM movement in India, much of
which is based on organisations in Northern India. The literature on biopiracy is
also relevant to the discussion of this movement. These bodies of secondary
literature provide a multifaceted understanding of the movement against GM
crops in India, highlighting different aspects of participants' work and history.
13

Research on the DLM has relied primarily on online sources, many of which can
be seen as the digital analogue of activities that would be conducted offline in
more traditional movements. Recruitment, dialogue, and even protests all
happen online to a far greater degree than offline. Online spaces, including
discussion forums, blogs (particularly their comments sections), and even
webcomics, have become sites for not only putting forward the movement's
perspectives but also holding meetings, organising, and recruiting. Movement
publications, including academic-activists' books, are readily accessible online,
and I have relied on several key websites as portals to this information. This
material has been supplemented by an extensive interview carried out with a
prominent member of the Swedish piratpartiet, the first political party in the
world to campaign on these issues.
My research has also been supplemented at times by use of Wikipedia. In part,
this is because it would be hypocritical to advocate for peer-produced
knowledge sources, as I do, while refusing to acknowledge my own use of
them. Many researchers use Wikipedia as a starting point for their research,
much as they would use any other encyclopaedia, either to acquaint themselves
with the background to issues they are unfamiliar with or to find more reputable
resources. In addition to these uses, academic responses to Wikipedia are
shifting. Some authors are now comfortable citing Wikipedia, as well as using it
for background information. Lisa Spiro (2008) has carried out a preliminary
analysis of Wikipedia use in the humanities and social sciences, finding that
while Wikipedia citations make up only a tiny proportion of citations in these
fields, the number of citations is increasing. Spiro also cites Matt
Kirschenbaum's discussion of his choice to use Wikipedia. Kirschenbaum
(2008, xvii) argues that while Wikipedia should be used with caution, it is
frequently the best source for up-to-date information on rapidly-changing areas,
including information technology. Similarly, Kate Milberry and Gabriella
Coleman, leading researchers in studies of Internet-based activism, note the
usefulness of Wikipedia in researching areas that have not yet reached the
academic arena. Milberry (2009) writes on her blog:

14

When nobody was writing on wikis, social software, copyleft, crowd

sourcing or free software, Wikipedia had the most comprehensive
definitions. Unlike an online dictionary reference, Wikipedia also contains
history, controversies, (often academic) citations and links out to key
people and websites. Researching the development and use of internet
technology for social justice activism, I typically find that Wikipedia has
the most useful, if not the only, information Im looking for.
Coleman, in the comments following this post, notes that while there are no
academic sources for her area of research, Wikipedia has an overflowing list of
handy references. Following the guidance of authors such as Kirschenbaum,
Milberry, and Coleman, I have approached the use of Wikipedia and other
online sources with caution, but have not avoided them. At times, I have used
these sources much as one would use data obtained through participant
observation and interviews. In other instances, however, it has been necessary
to turn to material on Wikipedia, blogs, or other online sources in order to
understand, analyse, and explain new technological developments or aspects of
activism that have not been covered in academic literature. Whenever I have
done so, it has been done critically and in an attempt to access the most
relevant and up-to-date material available.
Little secondary literature exists on the DLM, in part because of its relatively
recent emergence. The many differences between this movement and
traditional (and even new) social movements have led to a significant lack of
recognition of (or possibly interest in) the movement within the mainstream of
social movement scholarship. There are, however, a number of historical
accounts of movements that have fed into the DLM, notably Bruce Sterling's
(1992) account of the early days of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF),
The Hacker Crackdown, and various histories of the F/LOSS movement (cf.
Moody 2001; Torvalds & Diamond 2001). There is also a growing body of work
addressing the issues raised by the movement, including Lawrence Lessig's
(2004) Free Culture and James Boyle's (2008) The Public Domain, that
peripherally cover digital liberties activism as part of a wider discussion of the
perspectives and actors involved in the struggle over control of the flow of
15

information online. It is hoped that this thesis will go some way towards bringing
together this scattered work and pointing out directions for further research into
the movement.
This dissertation has also benefited in a more general sense from my
attendance at several events of importance to the movements studied. Most
notable of these were two WSFs, the 2006 WSF in Karachi, Pakistan, and the
2007 WSF in Nairobi, Kenya. WSFs are the largest gatherings of participants in
the GJM, a space in which activists gather to debate analysis and strategies,
and build connections. The WSF is an excellent place to take the pulse of the
movement, full of chaos and the many contradictions that run through today's
global web of activism. In addition to my participation in these WSFs, in 2007 I
attended a seminar on food security in Bangalore which brought together
practitioners, activists, and academics interested in sustainable agriculture,
many of whom I had met during my earlier trip to Bangalore. While only one
session was explicitly directed at GM issues, the opposition to GM crops was a
recurring theme throughout the formal and informal sections of the seminar.
Finally, my attendance at Barcamp Bangalore 5 in 2007 gave me a new
perspective on activism in India, allowing me to meet many people who were
attempting to combine their technical expertise with a concern with social
justice. In their own way, each of these events allowed me to gain a better
picture of connections within and between movements.
Ethically, there were two main issues that needed to be addressed with regard
to this research. The first issue relates to the power dynamic between the
researcher and the subjects of research. This is particularly a concern with
regard to participants in the Indian movement, many of whom are not literate or
do not read English and therefore will not be able to access, let alone comment
on, the way in which I analyse and present their activism. To an extent this was
compensated for by giving a full explanation to all interviewees of what the
material would be used for, answering any questions they had about me, my
work, and my background, and maintaining contact with those with regular
access to the Internet. I have attempted to make my work available for those
who are interested and have access to the Internet: I discuss my research and
16

invite comments on my blog, have posted edited extracts of interviews (with the
permission of interviewees), and have the full text of all publications available
for download and comment. Two of my publications have been in spaces
accessed by both researchers and activists: a working paper was published in
the proceedings of the 2006 International Society for Third-Sector Research
(ISTR) Conference, which was attended by those from the NGO sector as well
as academics, and a paper on the Indian movement was published in a 2007
special on biopolitics in Agenda, a South African feminist journal aimed at both
academics and activists. In most cases, there will be a huge gulf between the
power of social scientists to shape the representations of those they study and
the power of those studied to contest the way in which they are presented.
However, to the extent possible I have attempted to lessen this gulf.
Secondly, participant-observer research opens up questions of bias. Academics
can never hope to be truly objectivewe are always affected by our lifeexperiences, and whether we consciously intend it or not our work may be used
to bolster some of the world's existing power structures and some of the
struggles against them. I am white, a fledgling academic (with all the privileges
that come with the position, including a scholarship and funded international
travel), a storyteller, a member of several online communities, a Linux user (and
propagandist), and an advocate of appropriate technology. My many
overlapping selves have informed my prejudices and my affinities, and I have
tried to bear them in mind and test them. Without the passion we bring to
research from the world outside our offices our work would be much drier,
irrelevant to the struggles that flow through our lives. However, our work would
be stagnant without the desire to push ourselves and learn more, to question
our existing beliefs.

Limitations of this study

As I have noted throughout the text, there are a number of difficulties involved in
studying social movements. One of the most significant limitations of this
research lies in the difficulty of identifying and reaching a representative crosssection of movement participants. Despite attempts to ensure that participants
17

from the most marginalised sections of society were represented in my study of

the Indian movement against GM crops, their voices have often been
overwhelmed by those of movement leaders. The difficulty posed by language
barriers was the most significant factor here, but it was compounded by the
gatekeeping function played by movement leaders and by my own lack of
familiarity and social ties to the communities involved. It was easier to access
the opinions of a more representative range of participants within the DLM, in
large part because of their involvement in online forums and their visibility
through blogs and other social media. Nevertheless, even in this case the
perspectives of movement leaders tend to eclipse those of other participants.
Secondly, this research has been hampered by my limited ability to access
Southern academic or activist literature related to the movements described. In
part, this is because of my limited language skills: I do not speak any Indian
languages. Many Indian texts were also only available to me during my stay in
India. Where possible I have attempted to seek out perspectives from the South
in order to balance the bias in much of the relevant bodies of literature towards
Northern voices and groups. Studies of social movements continue to have a
lamentable bias towards events that occur in the Global North (particularly in
Europe and the United States), and the field is dominated by academics from
these areas. Similarly, even the literature on the Indian movement discussed in
Chapter Two is dominated by Northern academics, and Chapter Three is largely
bare of perspectives from the Global South. Women have been similarly underrepresented. It is difficult to tell whether I could have done more to include
marginalised voices: the limitations of the literature itself, the availability of
material, and my inability to speak languages other than English have all played
a role in confounding my attempts to provide a wider range of perspectives.

Structure
The first chapter lays out the theoretical and historical background of the thesis,
addressing the development of both neoliberal globalisation and the antiglobalisation movement. It explores the links between the ICT revolution,
changes to the capitalist mode of production, and the emergence of the GJM.
18

The argument put forward in this chapter is that science, technology, and the
flow of information are all aspects of knowledge, and are fundamentally tied to
the process of globalisation from above, being used both to legitimate neoliberal
globalisation and to facilitate the flows of information that sustain it. However, at
the same time, the ICT revolution has been vital to the emergence of the GJM's
struggle for globalisation from below. Struggles over knowledge are vital to the
GJM for three reasons. Firstly, the Internet and other technologies of the
Information Age play a vital role in allowing the GJM to maintain a decentralised
structure constituted from a diverse range of struggles. Secondly, ICTs play an
important role in GJM activists' strategic toolbox. Thirdly, localised, democratic,
and peer-based knowledge systems empower GJM activists by investing their
arguments with authority.
The second chapter discusses the Indian movement against GM crops,
focusing on activism in the state of Karnataka. Often, participants in this
movement and others like it are romanticised and presented as farmers
struggling to maintain their traditional way of life. This chapter argues that
participants in the anti-GM movement are rational actors engaging in the same
dialogues as movement participants elsewhere, attempting to redefine the
structures of the contemporary world rather than return to an Arcadian past. It
outlines the various complexities within the movement, including intramovement struggles and the contradictions between rhetoric and reality. A vital
part of this struggle has been the attempt to delegitimise the science used by
corporations and governments to support the spread of GM seeds in India, and
to gain legitimacy for indigenous and grassroots knowledge. Participants in the
movement also contest corporations' attempts to patent life by placing legal and
technological restrictions on seeds, asserting that it should not be possible to
own either living beings or thousands of years of farmers' collective efforts. This
movement is an active part of the global debate over how knowledge is
produced and legitimised, and who should have access to it.
The third chapter discusses emerging digital rights activism. This chapter
establishes that there are grounds for considering the DLM to be a coherent
movement. It discusses the historical antecedents to the DLM, the demographic
19

involved in the movement, and the ideologies that inform it. This chapter puts
forward the argument that the issues this movement is addressing have a
relevance beyond the narrow field in which they have received attention. Issues
of government surveillance and corporate control of the Internet and computer
software have been discussed at length by those who are part of online
communities with a technological focus, as well as by academics such as
Yochai Benkler and Lawrence Lessig, who write on the implications of these
challenges for legislation. However, these issues have not diffused to the wider
scholarship on social movements, and have not received the attention that they
deserve within the activist community.
The fourth chapter synthesises the two case studies in the context of the
argument put forward in Chapter One. This chapter discusses the connections
and disjunctures between each of the movements studied here and the broader
GJM. It outlines several possible reasons why the DLM has failed to make
significant connections with other movements within the broader web of global
activism, including the personal histories of digital liberties activists and the
ideologies and discourses that tend to inform the movement. It also outlines
both the successes and failures the Indian anti-GM movement has had in
building links with other movements. This chapter argues that there are
compelling reasons to pay more attention to this aspect of the work of
movements in the Global South, as well as to address the disconnect between
the DLM and more traditional movements.
The Conclusion will review the dissertation and present contributions to the
field, which include arguing for the importance of struggles over knowledge to
the GJM, expanding existing research on the case-study movements, and
arguing that a more nuanced approach to the study of the GJM's structure is
necessary.

20

Chapter One
Neoliberalism, the global justice movement and
struggles over knowledge

Introduction
This chapter provides the conceptual and historical background for the thesis by
introducing two sites of contestation: knowledge and globalisation. The struggle
over globalisation gained widespread visibility in the Global North in 1999, when
thousands of people protested outside the WTO Ministerial Meeting in Seattle.
This was the first manifestation of the GJM to gain attention within the
mainstream media. However, struggles between global elites and activists over
the shape of globalisation were underway before Seattle, and have continued
since. This struggle takes many forms, and is tightly interwoven with struggles
over knowledge. Knowledgeas embodied in different systems of science,
technology, and information flowsaffects the processes of globalisation, and is
simultaneously a site of contestation, shaped by political, social, and economic
systems.
Section one provides a critical framework for understanding knowledge as a
contested space. It argues that science and technology, and knowledge more
broadly, should be understood as essentially contested and contestable areas.
There is significant evidence that science and technology not only shape, but
are shaped by, other systems of power, including political, economic, and social
structures. The paths of scientific research and technological development have
been influenced by their development within particular historical periods and
places, and science and technology are, far from being unbiased, used to
legitimise and provide logistical support for particular power structures. Science
and technology are also part of broader systems of knowledge, playing a crucial
role in the ways in which knowledge is produced, legitimised, accessed, and
disseminated. These aspects of knowledge systems are inherently political,
both in terms of how they overlap with and are shaped by other power
structures and in terms of their effects.

21

Section two discusses the contemporary character of global capitalism, and the
interaction between neoliberalism and knowledge. I argue that in light of the
growing power and ubiquity of Information Age science and technology, it is
more important than ever to pay attention to the interaction between knowledge
and politics. Scientific narratives have been mobilised to support the neoliberal
project, and to delegitimise opponents of neoliberalism, while ICTs have played
a crucial role in the recent restructuring of capitalism. However, these narratives
and technologies could have, and could yet, take alternative pathwaystheir
current incarnations are in part a result of the political and economic context in
which they have developed.
Section three discusses the GJM, which has grown from the amalgamation of
other movements around the world, as well as the emergence of new
movements, and which now poses a challenge to neoliberalism. In this section,
I argue that the way in which we understand science, the shape of particular
technologies, and the framing of particular groups as legitimate or illegitimate
producers of knowledge are vital to the GJM. GJM participants rely heavily on
the use of ICTs, both for their everyday activities and for their organisational
inspiration. Movement participants also need to be recognised as legitimate
speakers in order to achieve their goals; participants cannot assume that their
knowledgetheir analysis of the situation, their critiques, and their proposals for
alternativeswill always be accepted as valid. In order for this to happen, the
movement needs to contest the top-down, universal model of knowledge
production, and gain acceptance for grassroots, embedded, and embodied
knowledge.
Section four emphasises ongoing struggles over knowledge, looking at some of
the recent attempts by elites to (re)gain control over key technologies, and to
maintain their control over the production of knowledge. These attempts have
taken multiple forms, including what has been termed a second enclosure of the
commons, attempts to develop or retool ICTs for the purpose of surveillance,
and the denigration of projects that are based on peer-produced knowledge.
These struggles weave together legal, technological and cultural strategies.

22

Section one: knowledge and power

Knowledge, as a concept, is slippery. It is used to encapsulate formal systems
of ideas (Swidler & Aditi 1994, 306), but also content (such as music and
films), information, technologies and science (Stehr & Weiler 2008, 3-4). This
section outlines the relationship between these different aspects of knowledge,
arguing for knowledge to be seen as a number of overlapping systems rather
than as a series of discrete, self-contained and self-determining components.
Additionally, science, technology, content and information have political 4
implications, and the ways in which they are produced and accessed are
shaped by political considerations.
There are a number of different bodies of literature that have developed critical
theories of knowledge, including standpoint theories (Harding 1991), those
identified with the new sociology of knowledge (Swidler & Aditi 1994) and the
new sociology of science (Bauchspies, Croissant & Restivo 2006, 11-12), as
well as literature on the social shaping of technology (MacKenzie & Wajcman
1999), on technoscience (Latour 1987; Latour & Woolgar 1986), on
technofeminism (Haraway 1997; Wajcman 2004), and on actor-network theory
(Law & Hassard 1999). These bodies of literature blend into each other, and
share a central argument: that science and technology have political effects and
are shaped by the context in which they develop and by power structures, and
that knowledge is constituted through complex and overlapping systems. The
following discussion draws on insights from a number of these fields in order to
outline the relationship between knowledge and power.
To begin with, it is necessary to examine the separation of science and
technology. Technology is a term that is usually used to refer to human-made,
material artefacts, and often also to the social processes and knowledge
accompanying their development and use (Sclove 1995, 245 n. 4). Science, on
the other hand, is seen as a far loftier pursuit: the search for knowledge, and
ideally a search for pure knowledge as a self-justifying end in itself (Midgeley
1989, 12). However, over the last three decades a number of researchers and
philosophers have complicated this division. Latour and Woolgar's ethnographic
study of Laboratory Life in the Salk Institute provided evidence that one cannot
4

I use political in the sense of being imbued with power relations, rather than in the narrower
sense of relating to the formal structures of government.

23

take for granted the difference between material equipment and intellectual
components of laboratory activity: the same set of intellectual components can
be shown to become incorporated as a piece of furniture a few years later
(1986, 238). The technological artefacts of the laboratory are material
incarnations of currently-accepted scientific thought, and at the same time
shape the direction of scientific research and determine which data are
accepted as scientific fact. Latour developed the concept of technoscience 5 as a
way of bringing together the messy continuity of practice that is usually tidied
away and presented as science and technology (Bauchspies, Croissant &
Restivo 2006, 7). Science and technology are not separate, but rather mutually
constitute each other.
It is also necessary to understand science and technology as part of systems,
rather than in isolation. Arnold Pacey (1983, 6) argues that technologies are
often thought of as only specific machines, or systems of machines, linked with
the knowledge and skills needed to operate them. However, to properly
understand the role that technology plays in our lives we need to also include
the cultural and organisational aspects that surround the technical aspects of
particular technologies. Wajcman adopts a similar analysis, examining the ways
in which technological innovation builds on previous technology, not in the form
of separate, isolated devices but as part of a whole, as part of a system, which
is in turn integrated with other systems. The development of technological
artefacts ranging from fridges and microwaves to ballistic missiles is shaped not
just by the demands of the tasks they are meant to achieve, but also by existing
infrastructure, prevailing political ideologies such as the contemporary
construction of gender, as well as by other systems (Wajcman 2004, 34-38).
These systems overlap and constitute each other.
Critical theories of science and technology, and of knowledge more generally,
argue for a rethinking of the frequent division made between the realms of
science and technology and of politics, society, culture, and economics.
Frequently, science and technology are discussed as if their development is
shaped entirely according to their own internal, entirely rational and fact-based,
5

Donna Haraway has also discussed technoscience extensively, expanding and complicating
Latour's use of the concept and arguing that Technoscience extravagantly overshoots the
distinction between science and technology as well as those between nature and society,
subjects and objects, and the natural and the artifactual (1997, 3).

24

logic. A diagram from Wellington Grey's webcomic (1997) that was widely
circulated on the Internet illustrates this perspective admirably, contrasting the
scientific method with religion:

This idealised model of science is notable both for the rigid division it makes
between facts and values and for the questions and issues that it excludes.
There is no recognition in this model of political pressures, economic
constraints, or social influences on scientific research. Science is portrayed as
pure discovery, in which scientists come closer to an objective truth with every
step. Similarly, technological development is often seen as self-propelling,
moving forward along a singular path without human intervention. [...] There are
no social choices, as technology has only one path, which is intrinsically
determined, and there is no point in blocking the road down which technology
proceeds, as it is always for the good (Kleinman 2005, 5). This model is
reinforced by those who see scientific rationality in a negative light, but
25

nevertheless beholden to its own internal principles rather than outside forces
for these critics, the best that can be hoped for is to put limits on the reach of
science and technology into the lifeworld (Feenberg 1999). However, despite
the popular acceptance of this idealised model of scientific discovery, there is a
significant body of work that refutes it.
A number of writers have shown that social, political, and economic forces all
shape the path of scientific and technological change. At the most fundamental
level, Kuhn argued in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1970) that shifts in
scientific paradigms are social as much as scientific, revolutions rather than part
of a continuous or cumulative pursuit of truth, as previous philosophers had
characterised science (Hrd & Jamison 2005, 258). Postmodernism, feminism,
environmentalism and postcolonialism have each offered critiques of the
idealised model of an apolitical science propelled by an internal, universally
applicable rationality.
There is also a wealth of research that documents the various forces that
influence the development of particular scientific systems and technological
artefacts. Emily Martin's (1991) work on The Egg and the Sperm provides a
classic study of the way in which social structures, in this case gender, influence
scientific research. Martin argues that the conventional understanding of human
conception as a matter of active sperm and passive ova was shaped and
perpetuated by gender stereotypes. Even when researchers uncovered
evidence that challenged this understanding their model of conception remained
bound by a gendered understanding of the role ova and sperm played in
fertilisation. The idea that matrices of power such as race, wealth, political
structures or gender can influence the path of scientific and technological
change is therefore neither novel nor particularly controversial in many
disciplines. However, it is important to emphasise this point because the
argument put forward here relies on an understanding of knowledge as a site of
power and contestation, shaped by other power structures.
Scientific and technological change is, however, shaped not just by existing
power structures but also by users once particular artefacts and systems
become generally accessible. The French government's Teletel network, for
26

example, was initially meant to be a medium for disseminating official

information effectively. Users then hacked the system to expand from a
information-access system to one that had capabilities for person-to-person
communication. Subsequently the network became known as a medium for sex
chat, and those running it responded by promoting it with sexualised
advertisements (Rheingold 1994, 229-234). Very quickly, users significantly
reshaped not only the content carried on the network, but the very way in which
it worked. There are countless other examples of the creative rethinking of
technological systems by their users, from the many cases discussed in Hrd
and Jamison's (2005) Hubris and Hybrids through to skateboarders' use of
urban architecture as a space for play rather than shopping or work. These
examples complicate the vision of technological artefacts as the outcomes of
scientific discoveries, and of a sharp divide between scientists as active and
users as passive in the process of technological development. These examples
show that systems of knowledge are shaped by outside forces and interests
during and after their implementation, as well as during their development.
The contestability and multiplicity of knowledge is further illustrated by the
existence of alternative paths of development that are either aborted or follow a
parallel but subordinated path alongside dominant modes. Indigenous
knowledge systems relating to agriculture or medicine are prime examples of
this. For example, traditional Indian agriculture continues to be practised and
developed by a significant proportion of farmers at the same time as Green
Revolution agriculture dominates institutional and commercial thinking in India.
While the proprietary model of software development dominates the desktop
market, other sections of the software industry are dominated by F/LOSS.
Examples abound of other ways of doing research, other ways of knowing,
other processes for technological change. The continued existence of
subordinated systems such as these highlights the contingent nature of
dominant systems by offering models of alternatives that could have been more
influential. They also offer starting-points for imagining change to existing
systems.
Throughout this thesis, I refer to peer-based knowledge systems as alternatives
to dominant modes of knowledge production. Grassroots knowledge, which can
27

be thought of as part of the spectrum of peer-based knowledge systems, are

usually seen as those built from the practices and experiences of everyday life,
and rooted in specific locations. Grassroots knowledge is often discussed in
terms of indigenous agricultural or medicinal systems, although community-level
knowledge and informal knowledge in the Global North (Swidler & Aditi 1994,
321-322) have also been understood as part of this paradigm. While grassroots
knowledge is often contrasted with more hierarchical forms of knowledge, the
distinction between grassroots and hierarchical knowledge systems is not
always clear-cut. Grassroots knowledge systems often include elements of
hierarchy, such as increased legitimacy for those who hold certain roles within
the community or differing value placed on contributions according to the
gender, age, or other aspects of the contributor's identity. Some systems, such
as the academic peer-review system, include elements of openness,
decentralisation, and democratic principles while simultaneously excluding
certain groups and perspectives and placing barriers to contributions. In
discussing peer-based knowledge production, then, there must be recognition
that peer-based knowledge systems differ in their details, and may take many
different forms. The relevant forms of peer-based knowledge production will be
discussed in more detail in the following chapters.
Many aspects of contemporary knowledge systems actively reinforce social,
political, and economic inequalities. One way to understand this relationship is
through substantivist perspectives on science and technology, which are those
that see these systems and artefacts as imbued with particular values, a classic
example being McLuhan's (1994) declaration that the medium is the message.
Feenberg (1999) argues that substantivist perspectives share similarities with
technological determinism, in which science and technology are viewed as
homogeneous and autonomous. However, work by scholars such as Sclove
(1999)

emphasises

the

particularity

of

technological

systems,

seeing

technologies as carrying certain values but at the same time being contestable
and

multiplicitous.

Sclove

(1999)

provides

well

thought-out

and

comprehensive discussion of the many ways in which technologies shape our

lives, ranging from the way in which furniture design and placement affects
people's sense of personal space and their interactions with each other right
through to the implications of particular technologies for different models of
28

democracy. He argues that various technologies play a role in producing

undemocratic

outcomes,

as

well

as

reinforcing

disadvantage

among

marginalised groups within society, including women, children, and people with
disabilities, but suggests that ultimately technology can be shaped by, and in
ways that further, democratic concerns.
While Sclove's work focuses on the effects that technological systems have on
social structures and behaviours, other work has looked at the way in which
dominant scientific paradigms shape the structures through which we think
about the world. For example, Darwin's theory of evolution was twisted into the
social darwinism used by Herbert Spencer and Francis Galton to justify
eugenics and racism. Science and technology do not determine society, and
society does not fully script the course of technology changerather, a complex
pattern of interaction affects the shape of both (Castells 2000a, 5). It is therefore
both possible and necessary to understand systems of knowledge as part of
power structures while simultaneously being mutable, a site for resistance as
well as domination.

Section two: the Information Age and neoliberal globalisation

Arguably, the need to consider the power of different systems of knowledge has
acquired a new urgency in the wake of the ICT revolution and the restructuring
of capitalism. Manuel Castells argues that during the 1970s, a converging set
of technologies in micro-electronics, computing (machines and software),
telecommunications/ broadcasting, and opto-electronics came together and
reinforced each others' effects (2000a, 29) [emphasis in original], drastically
changing our ability to communicate and manage information. Castells includes
biotechnologies in this set of technologies,
not only because genetic engineering is focused on the decoding,
manipulation, and eventual reprogramming of the information codes of
living matter, but also because biology, electronics, and informatics seem
to be converging and interacting in their applications, in their materials
and, more fundamentally, in their conceptual approach (2000a, 29).

29

These technologies have had wide-ranging effects on society, economics and

culture. They have changed the way in which we produce and access content,
making it trivial to share vast amounts of information. They have also been
linked to changes in the contemporary capitalist system. Castells argues that
ICTs have led to a new, informational mode of development [in which] the
source of productivity lies in the technology of knowledge generation,
information processing, and symbol communication (2000a, 16-17). This
informational mode of development is linked to, but distinct from, the capitalist
restructuring that has accompanied it (2000a, 14). The argument that changes
to capitalism have been caused by ICTs alone is not convincing, but they have
certainly played a role in accelerating the development of neoliberal capitalism.
The emergence of neoliberal capitalism has been associated with many
changes. For the purposes of this discussion, it is sufficient to note two major
differences between contemporary capitalism and the capitalism of previous
eras. The first change that is relevant here has been to the scope of capitalism;
whereas previously capitalism was international, today it is global, affecting all
parts of the world, albeit in different ways (Burbach 2001, 33). The global nature
of contemporary capitalism means that people throughout the world are being
affected by interrelated processes, although the effects are uneven. Whether
one lives in a global city or a village in a rural area, life has been and continues
to be changed fundamentally by the processes of economic globalisation. This
has played a role in facilitating the emergence of the GJM, as we will discuss
below.
A second change worth noting is that while Fukuyama (1992) and various
political leaders have put forward the claim that western liberal democracy has
triumphed, the role of the nation-state has changed and democracy has,
arguably, been further constrained by the increasing power of international
financial institutions and multinational corporations (MNCs). While it is tempting
to see this as a straightforward process in which states cede power to the
interests of capital, the situation is more complicated. Burbach writes that [t]he
determinant feature of the current epoch is the supersession of the nation state
as the organizing principle of capitalism, and with it, of the inter-state system as

30

the framework of capitalist development (2001, 45). However, others see the
role of the state as changing, rather than being superseded.
Government responses to the global financial crisis, which have included
nationalisation of financial institutions in some cases, would seem to confirm
this. Additionally, while to some extent national governments may be
constrained by international institutions and the demands of capital, they exert
power over their own citizens and other states through the requirements that
these institutions place on national policies, and through rhetoric about to the
need to remain competitive in the global economy. There is a strong case for
the argument that states could, and should, play a role in buffering their citizens
from the negative effects of economic globalisation. Neoliberalism, therefore, is
both global and transnational, but it does not entirely efface national boundaries
or the importance of the nation state. One of the implications of this is that
resistance to the dominant world system is directed towards MNCs and
international financial institutions as well as nation-states.
A number of factors have played a role in changes to the form of capitalism over
previous decades. David Harvey, for example, has argued that neoliberal
ideology was spread through the capture of the media, corporations,
educational institutions, and political parties, as well as by the co-option of
social movements calling for increased individual freedom (2005, 40-41). In
addition to these processes, and interlinked with them, the ICT revolution of the
1970s played an important role. While the restructuring of capitalism may have
been possible without ICTs, it would have taken on a vastly different form. ICTs
have played a role in the establishment of international financial institutions, the
increasing international flows of capital, finance, and trade, and the
development of a global elite. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has
acknowledged the key role that ICTs played in this process. Its 2005 report on
the World Economic Outlook noted that [t]he recent bout of financial
globalization is partly associated with the decline in information processing and
dissemination costs that have fostered cross-border trade in an expanding
variety of financial instruments through decreased transaction costs (IMF in
Youngs 2007, 11). Just-in-time manufacturing and global shipping may seem to
be inherently material processes, but they also require information management
31

on a scale that was not possible several decades ago. The speed, as well as
the nature, of capitalist restructuring has also been affected by the ICT
revolution. Bae argues that ICTs have combined with the globalization of
finance and production to produce synergies that have accelerated changes in
the world economy (2003, 87), increasing the pace of economic globalisation.
Neoliberal globalisation has grown with, and been shaped by, the ICT
revolution.
As well as the logistical support that ICTs provide to neoliberal capitalism,
capitalism is shored up by the ideologies that are built up around science and
technology, in particular the taken-for-granted assertion that capitalism is the
foundation of scientific and technological progress, the only political and
economic system that supports innovations. There are a number of variations of
this claim: one of the most significant contemporary versions is that the current
capitalist system allows scientists and technological innovators to pursue their
work not only by allowing corporations to provide funding for the vast apparatus
required to splice their genes or smash their atoms, but also by opening up the
prospect of getting intellectual property rights on their results, so adding the
fortune of follow-up exploitation to the fame of initial discovery as a vital
incentive (Shipman 2002, 192). These claims depend in part upon an
effacement or devaluation of other visions of knowledge, such as traditional
knowledge systems and the appropriate technology movement.
References to the mutually supportive relationship between capitalism,
particularly in its current incarnation, and science and technology also depend
in large part on an implicit substantivist view of scientific and technological
development as inherently progressive and predominantly positive. The claim
that capitalism is essential to scientific progress is only useful if science is
invoked as the protagonist of the story. This is a story of the science that
created high-yielding agriculture, cured polio, and (to move from the 1950s to
the 2000s) will develop nanotechnology and sustainable energy that will allow
everyone to have a western lifestyle while simultaneously preventing the harms
of climate change and other forms of environmental degradation.

32

Capitalism's supposedly symbiotic relationship with scientific progress is also

framed within a wider claim that capitalism has demonstrated its superiority over
other systems through a process of evolutionary competition. Shipman argues
that,
Today's institutions and ideas survive and thrive because they outperformed the alternatives. To still be around, they have to be the best
around. Any superior approach would, by now, have stepped in and
stolen the show. So the clamour for change is actually a call to turn the
clock back to solutions that were tried and found wanting several
centuries ago. Globalization is a product of this Darwinian, 'retainedbecause-judged-relevant' logic (2002, 200).
By this logic, neoliberalism and economic globalisation are the outcome of
evolutionary processes, the pinnacle of the competition between different
political systems. Other systems of knowledge are pushed to the side or, more
often, ignored completely, as are the political outcomes and systems that may
be produced by these systems.
There are two important points to note here. The first is that none of these
myths are, in all likelihood, essential to the neoliberal project. Neoliberalism
harnesses many stories to its wagon, including narratives of gender and race,
as well as those discussed above. Further, while neoliberalism provides an
ideological justification for economic globalisation, both the threat and the use of
force also play a role in its spread; economic globalisation is not built on
ideology alone. Within nations, even democracies, police forces and armies
have been deployed to subdue dissent (Fernandez 2008), while the United
States government has repeatedly shown its willingness to intervene overseas
in order to further its foreign policy agenda, from its military actions in Iraq
between 2003 and the present to its involvement in the failed 2002 coup against
President Chavez in Venezuela (Vulliamy 2002). Therefore, attempts to
undermine claims relating to science and technology put forward by proponents
of neoliberalism are unlikely to cause any great weakening of neoliberal
capitalism. However, these myths do not only shore up neoliberalismthey also
act to silence dissent by discrediting alternatives as unrealistic, unscientific, or a
33

sign of Luddite tendencies. Undermining the general acceptance of the

narratives that surround the relationship between capitalism and scientific
progress may therefore be an important step for those proposing alternatives to
economic globalisation.
Secondly, if, as was argued in the previous section, knowledge systems are
developed by the economic, political, and social power structures that surround
and run through them, it is not only the narratives that surround knowledge
systems that are shaped and used by proponents of neoliberalism. From the
development and design of particular technological artefacts through to the
fundamental structure of science itself, contemporary knowledge systems have
been shaped by the context in which they have emerged. This idea can be
explored through counterfactual thought experiments, systems that exist as
subordinate alternatives, and examinations of the forces that influenced the
development of particular ICTs. Existing alternatives, such as the Cuban
biotechnology for the people (Mola et al. 2006) or the tiered Internet proposed
by companies in the United States discussed below, provide visions of
alternatives that might have been, or might one day become, dominant. Castells
has written extensively on how American culture and political structures have
influenced the milieux of innovation surrounding ICTs (2000a), and the various
influences on Internet culture, including academia and the US counter-cultural
movement of the late 1960s and 1970s (2001). It is vital to bear this in mind
when we discuss the politics of knowledgeremembering that knowledge
systems can (and do) exist in forms other than those that are currently dominant
opens the space available for dissent, and for imagining other futures.
This is particularly important in light of the far-reaching changes that have
accompanied the informational mode of development and the rise of
neoliberalism. As Castells notes, humans are now more tightly tied to our
productive technologies than ever before, as there is a close relationship
between the social processes of creating and manipulating symbols (the culture
of society) and the capacity to produce and distribute goods and services (the
productive forces) (2000a, 31). These developments are hailed by some as
first steps into a new (and better) phase of human existence. Techno-utopians
such as Kevin Kelly and Nicholas Negroponte see ICTs as able to empower the
34

individual, enhance personal freedom, and radically reduce the power of the
nation-state

(Barbrook

&

Cameron

1995).

Proponents

of

neoliberal

globalisation explicitly or implicitly claim that the changes wrought by economic

globalisation and the knowledge systems linked to it are both beneficial and
inevitable (Shipman 2002; Friedman 2000 & 2005; Brown 2006). For others,
these developments are a cause for concern. The combination of systems
which stretch from the sub-molecular level of genetic engineering to global
effects such as climate change, and a neoliberal globalisation that affects all
corners of the world, has come under fire from a number of unexpected
directions. One of the most significant of these is the movement of movements
that made its dbut in Seattle in 1999: the global justice movement.

Section three: the global justice movement and knowledge

systems
The first part of this section discusses the background to the emergence of the
GJM, including its roots in the NSMs of the 1960s and 1970s and in movements
from the Global South. While in part the GJM can be seen as a reaction to the
effects of neoliberal globalisation, it is primarily defined through its incorporation
of a wide variety of struggles addressing different facets of global justice, and
through a commitment to sustainability and democracy, as well as a desire to
reform or radically alter capitalism. It is also defined through the value placed on
diversity within the movement, not only as a goal to aim for in the contest over
globalisation, but also as a defining feature of the movement itself. The second
part of this section discusses the importance of knowledge systems to the work
and structure of the GJM. Firstly, these systems are important because the very
structure of the GJM, particularly its decentralised nature and its ability to
incorporate diversity, is inextricably tied to the democratic potential of ICTs.
Secondly, knowledge systems are important because ICTs have become vital
parts of GJM activists' toolbox. Thirdly, knowledge is important because
activists' ability to gain legitimacy for their analysis relies on the acceptance of
non-elites as producers of authoritative knowledge.

35

The emergence of the global justice movement

As noted in the introduction, by the late 1990s there was a sense in most
corners that capitalism, liberal democracy, and the free market had defeated all
comers. State socialism as a serious alternative had collapsed, and the social
movements of the late 1960s and 1970s seemed to be settling into a
comfortable pattern of contention, making demands upon elites without
challenging the fundamental structure of the liberal democratic state. The 1999
protests in Seattle overturned this sense of complacency, calling attention to a
new phenomenonthe GJM. As protest followed protest, the movement
evolved, and commentators called attention to its roots in the Global South. The
GJM was recognised as manifesting not just in Seattle, or even Prague,
Geneva, Edinburgh, Melbourne, and other cities that played host to meetings of
the World Economic Forum (WEF) and WTO, but also in Chiapas, in Porto
Alegre, in Mumbai, in millions of smaller protests, communications, websites,
tiny flickers well below the radar screens of mainstream political science and
international relations studies. The GJM did not come out of nowhereit has a
long lineage, and is built on decades of organising in both the Global South and
the Global North.
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, a number of protests gained
international attention. In 1968 a small group of students occupied the
University of Nanterre, in France, protesting changes to university funding and
course structures. The police tried to re-take the university, and it was
eventually shut down by its administration. Other university students in the
Sorbonne began to protest against the presence of police in universities and
against arrests carried out during protests and meetings. Other sections of
society joined inmany professors showed their support for students and local
residents assisted demonstrators. On May 13 a general strike began and
protests were held against the government's internal imperialism and for the
rights of students and workers (Feenberg & Freedman 2001, 5-30). These
events, and the strikes and protests which followed, attained a mythic
proportion for the Left in France and elsewhere (Feenberg & Freedman 2001,
xv). At the same time, 1968 saw protests in other parts of the developed world.
Dubcek, under public pressure, began a series of reforms in Czechoslovakia,
including greater freedom of speech and an opening up of the political system.
36

The Soviet Union responded by sending in the tanks, and many people
demonstrated against the occupying force, protesting and putting up graffiti and
posters (Glenn 2003; Davies 2007). In the US, a range of social movements
were also having a significant impact on the political landscape, including the
anti-war movement and the feminist movement. Protests elsewhere in the
Global North contributed to the sense that change was in the air.
By the 1980s, social movement theorists had come to see the movements that
had emerged in the late 1960s as constituting a new phase in collective action,
and Alberto Melucci had coined the phrase new social movement to describe
them (Melucci 1996, 5). Melucci, Touraine, Offe, Habermas, and others working
within the new social movements perspective on social movement studies
argued that these events were a sign that post-industrial societies were no
longer concerned with the materialist goals of traditional leftist movements. The
old left was, many theorists argued, associated with social democracy and
communism, with class conflict, trade unions, conventional lifestyles, and
modernist views that embraced technological progress (Hunt 2003, 14). NSMs
were differentiated from the old left through not only their goals, but also their
rejection of prevailing avenues for change, their disregard for seizing state
power, their focus on cultural and social rights as well as struggles over material
goods and resources, and a membership composed of the new middle class as
well as those marginal to the labour market (Burgmann 2003, 18-19; Della Porta
& Diani 1999, 12). The environmental, queer, and feminist movements are
prime exemplars of NSMs.
The new social movement perspective has come under criticism for a number of
reasons. One of these is its failure to recognise the continuities between NSMs
and previous movements (Hunt 2003), while another is the tendency to see
NSMs as unitary empirical objects (Melucci 2006, 5). Others criticise the
perspective for paving the way for a postmodernist attack on a critical,
collectivist, confrontational and campaigning impetus and encouraging the shift
towards a politics of identity (Burgmann 2003, 22). Similarly, new social
movement theory was seen as implying a value judgement between old and
new movements, with the replacement of class-based movements by identitybased movements valorised as a positive and necessary development
37

(Burgmann 2003, 19). Finally, the new social movements perspective has been
charged with neglecting the insights that could come from closer attention to
Southern movements, as has most social movement theory (Foweraker 1995).
Each of these criticisms is valid, to an extent, and introduces complexities to our
understanding of the movements that emerged during the 1960s and 1970s,
which I will continue to refer to as NSMs.
Several aspects of NSMs should be emphasised at this point, and it is important
to note gaps and problems with new social movement theory. NSMs show many
continuities with their predecessors. Both old and new social movements
make identity claims, become involved in institutionalised politics, have both
hierarchical and decentralised organisational components, and mobilise the
middle class as well as other sections of the population (Pichardo 1997, 414419). As is the case with other social movements, NSMs are heterogeneous,
and the characteristics that define them are not necessarily shared by, or limited
to, all groups within a designated NSM. As well as concerns with the
categorisation of NSMs, the new social movements perspective (along with
social movement scholarship more generally) has at times become bogged
down in abstract and introspective discussions that have little application to the
world of activism (Flacks 2005, 7-9). Both the European and the North American
scholarship on social movements have neglected and continue to neglect
Southern movements, with Latin American movements being the major
exception (Edelman 2001, 291-294). These problems, to a greater or lesser
degree, are acknowledged throughout the literature.
Nevertheless, it is true to say that after the late 1960s many existing
movements began to display the characteristics of NSMs listed above, and new
movements emerged that fit this categorisation. The GJM owes much to these
movements, and shares many of the characteristics attributed to NSMs,
including anarchic organisational structure, novel protest methods, and (to a
lesser extent) post-materialist aims and an active middle-class membership.
However, the key difference between NSMs as they are conventionally
categorised and the GJM is that the latter has a much broader scope, both in
terms of the issues that it addresses and in terms of its geographical reach. The
evolution from NSMs to the GJM was aided by three interrelated factors: the
38

linkages made between increasingly transnational NSMs and Southern

movements, the rise of neoliberalism, and the ICT revolution.
From the 1960s onward, large parts of the Global South were experiencing
massive upheavals. On October 2nd 1968, in La Plaza de las Tres Culturas in
Mexico City, a student demonstration against government attacks on civil
liberties and university autonomy was broken up by the police. Around 300
students were killed, and around a thousand arrested. Many involved in the
student movement fled the city and went into the country to carry on the fight,
influenced by Che Guevara and Mao (Rubin 2002, 40-41). National liberation
and anti-colonial struggles were taking place throughout the Third World, as it
was then known, many of which involved attempting to redefine women's rights
and status. Gail Omvedt (1998) argues that a range of social movements that
emerged in the 1970s in India, including dalit and anti-caste movements,
womens movements, environmental movements, and farmers movements,
should also be seen as NSMs. These movements are just as important to the
history of the GJM as predominantly western NSMs, if not more so.
Throughout the last three decades of the twentieth century, many groups and
movements have built links and networks that crossed the divide between the
Global North and South. These networks have intensified and expanded
connections that have been present even in movements during nineteenth and
early twentieth century, including movements against foot-binding in China and
against circumcision in Kenya (Keck & Sikkink 1998, 39), Chilean activism
against the Pinochet regime, and later attempts to have General Pinochet tried
for human rights violations spread from Chile around the world (Khagram, Riker
& Sikkink 2002, 3). NGO and church groups began to build networks around
debt and structural adjustment issues in the 1970s, and by the 1990s
transnational networks in the US and Europe were strengthening ties with
groups in Latin America, Asia, and Africa (Donnelly 2002, 158-159). During the
1990s, activists' attempts to prevent the building of the Narmada Dam in India
built an international campaign, forging connections with organisations based in
the United States, Europe, and Japan (Kothari 2002, 236-237). These, and
numerous other campaigns and movements, were precursors to the protests at
Seattle.
39

A number of transnational social movement networks and organisations have

grown out of or have a substantial base in the Global South, many of which
have been instrumental in forming the backbone of the GJM. These include
People's Global Action (PGA), which is not a formal organisation and therefore
has no official headquarters, and Via Campesina, which has an international
operative secretariat in Indonesia. PGA self-identifies as an instrument for
coordinating social movements' activism, and has been involved in organising
worldwide Global Action Days, Caravans, and regional conferences since its
creation in early 1998 (Desmarais 2003, 37; People's Global Action 2007). Via
Campesina, an international peasant farmers' union, has been described as
one of the most extraordinary examples of the movement's capacity for
international networking (Notes from Nowhere 2003b, 28). Created in 1993, it
currently claims members in 56 countries throughout the world, and defines its
struggle as being against neoliberalism and injustice worldwide (Via Campesina
2009). These coalitions and others like them, including the Third World Network,
played a role in creating international networks in the lead-up to Seattle, and
continue to do so today.
Movements in the Global South have also played a key role in developing the
strategies and tactics adopted by those within the GJM. Graeber notes that
[m]any, perhaps most, of the movement's signature techniquesincluding
mass non-violent civil disobedience itselfwere first developed in the global
South (2004, 207). The Ejrcito Zapatista de Liberacin Nacional (EZLN), more
commonly known as the Zapatistas, are seen as having reinvented the radical
political imagination of the world, providing a blueprint for a new movement
(Notes from Nowhere 2003b). This group owes much to the the ideas and the
activists of the 1968 wave of protest in Mexico, but has changed considerably
over time and developed a new language and form (Rubin 2002). As well as
using what Notes From Nowhere, a collective of global justice activists, calls a
quite different language of resistanceof land, poetry, indigenous culture,
diversity, ecology, dignity (2003b, 23), the Zapatistas have helped to bring the
GJM into being through online and face-to-face meetings, in particular the 1996
Encuentro Against Neoliberalism and For Humanity (Milburn 2004, 473). The

40

contributions of Southern movements to the formation of the GJM, and to its

growth and activities, have been significant.
At the same time, the increasing transnationalisation of predominantly western
NSMs has been an important factor in the emergence of the GJM. Many social
movements, including those that preceded the NSMs, have had an international
or transnational element to their analysis and/or their organisational structure. In
addition to the examples discussed above, Keck and Sikkink (1998) point out
that both the abolitionist and woman suffrage movements involved extensive
communication between activists in different countries, while the labour
movement of the 19th and early 20th centuries was originally conceived of as
international in structure and internationalist in aim [emphasis in original]
(Waterman 1998, 17). The transnationalisation of social movements picked up
speed in the 1980s and 1990s; even before the 1999 Seattle protests scholars
were starting to comment on the increasing transnational nature of activism.
Hegedus argued in 1989 that the 1980s had seen a shift from the local to the
global in the understandings and orientations of supporters of western social
movements (in Cohen & Kennedy 2000, 299), while Kreisberg (1997) noted the
increasing proliferation of transnational social movement organisations
(TSMOs) during the 1980s and 1990s. These TSMOs, and the increasingly
transnational analysis of many NSM participants, gradually increased their links
with Southern movements and TSMOs.
One of the most commonly cited reasons for the increase in transnational
connections over recent decades is the rise of neoliberalism and the growth of
economic globalisation. With the growing reach of the institutions and
processes of neoliberal globalisation, participants in struggles around the world
began

to

recognise

commonalities

under

its

aegis.

Many

of

these

commonalities centre around recognition of a common enemy, as different

groups find themselves facing the same global corporations, international
institutions, and market-driven race to the bottom (Brecher, Costello & Smith
2000, 15), as well as environmental degradation that stretches across national
boundaries. One story from the movement explains the coming-together of
different struggles as a result of their common oppression: For struggling for a
better world all of us are fenced in, threatened with death. The fence is
41

reproduced globally. In every continent, every city, every countryside, every

house (Marcos 2003, 0). There is a significant body of academic, activist, and
journalistic writing that addresses and critiques this view of the GJM as a
response to neoliberalism. Here it is enough to note that both a common goal (a
better world) and a common threat (described here using the metaphor of the
fence, which separates people from each other, from the spaces of decisionmaking, from the resources that they need to live well) have played a role in the
formation of the GJM.
There are also more pragmatic aspects to this story. How are fences broken?
How do [t]he rebels search each other out, walk towards one another, find
each other and together break other fences (Marcos 2003, 6-7)? In a literal
sense, much of this was, and is, achieved through the same networks and flows
that have facilitated the restructuring of capitalism and the emergence of
neoliberalism, ICTs being particularly important. As well as the dominant
networks of trade, finance, and capital, other international networks are growing
in importance, as ordinary people not only move across national boundaries
but take advantage of cheap transportation and communication to sustain new
transnational communities (Evans 2000, 39). As the Notes from Nowhere
Collective put it, the emergence of the GJM meant that,
[c]apital's dream of super fast networks that will spread consumerism
across the planet was turned on its head. [...] People were using the
global communications infrastructure for something completely different
to become more autonomous, to get the state and corporations off
their backs, to live in a more healthy way. To talk to one another (2003b,
65).
ICTs, particularly the Internet, and other global flows provide the material means
for activists to communicate with each other and non-participants, to organise,
and to engage in the activities which together form a global web of activism.
This, then, provides some understanding of how and why the GJM has
emerged, but further discussion is required as to how to define the GJM. There
have been numerous attempts to theorise the GJM, each of which understands
42

it in slightly different terms. Proponents of neoliberalism tend to portray it as an

anti-globalisation movement, reactionary and opposed to all forms of
globalisation (Venter & Swart 2002a, 116). However, as hinted at above, to the
extent that the movement is against globalisation it is against neoliberal
globalisation, and both relies on and encourages many other forms of
globalisation (Jordan & Taylor 2004, 43). Almost all commentators recognise the
heterogeneity of this global web of movements, and it is often referred to as a,
or even the, movement of movements (della Porta et al. 2006; Klein 2004),
although there are slightly different interpretations about what defines it and
what it is calling for. Starr, for example, sees it as a network of anti-corporate
movements

confronting

(economic)

globalisation

(2006),

while

others

understand it as primarily an anti-capitalist movement (cf. Callinicos 2003), a

movement for globalisation from below (Brecher, Costello & Smith 2000), an
alterglobalisation movement, or even a globalisation movement (Graeber 2004,
204). Each of these labels brings with it a slightly different understanding of the
movement, a different setting of boundaries.
For brevity's sake, I will mainly refer to this movement of movements as the
global justice movement, although I use other terms at times. The global justice
movement label takes precedence because it is in frequent use by activists.
While this should not be the only determining factor in social scientists' use of
particular terminology, it is an important consideration. Secondly, and on a
related note, this term avoids typecasting the movement as purely reactionary,
unlike the anti-globalisation epithet. Finally, it defines the GJM through its aim
justice on a global scalewhile leaving room for the many ambiguities of the
movement. However, I wish to emphasise that labels used by other authors
each capture an element of the movement, which is at times anti-capitalist, anticorporate, a movement for globalisation from below, and so on. Each of these
are avatars of the movement. At the same time there are other networks of
movements involved in other struggles that overlap with and flow through the
GJM.
The GJM is made up of a wide variety of actors who drift in and out of
involvement, including individuals, smaller movements, and organisations of
various sorts. Few of these actors are pursuing a goal primarily defined as
43

global justice, or even opposition to neoliberal globalisation. Rather, they are

involved in struggles over issues which feed into the end goal of a more
democratic, diverse, and sustainable world. Additionally, actors within the GJM
pursue their goals through quite different strategies, spanning both
normal/institutional and non-normal/non-institutional political action (Fisher et
al. 2005, 104). The movement contains many contradictions, including
conflicting interests and groups that were previously, or remain, hostile to each
other (Brecher, Costello & Smith 2000, 16). It therefore seems legitimate to ask
what, if anything, holds the movement together.
A number of overlapping and interconnected strands form the warp and weft of
the GJM. As in a tapestry, none of these issues and struggles can, alone, define
the movement. It is the fact of their interconnectedness that makes the GJM
what it is. The first of these is the attempt by global justice activists to critique
our existing relationship to nature and offer alternatives. Such an attempt is
exemplified by the International Forum on Globalization's report on Alternatives
to Economic Globalization, which lists ecological sustainability as one of ten
core principles for societies that offer an alternative to neoliberalism, as well as
drawing on ecological ideas in their discussion of other principles such as the
precautionary principle, food security and safety, diversity, and a common
heritage (Anderson et al. 2004, 77100). GJM activists are engaging in many
different struggles, but the desire for sustainability is a common theme
throughout the movement.
A second strand which is notable within the movement is the commitment to
exploring more direct forms of democracy: activists argue that elections alone
are not enough, and that decisions should by made by those who will bear the
consequences (Anderson et al. 2004, 79). The commitment to direct democracy
is also embodied in the lived practices of the movement itself, which activists
proudly describe as being without leaders [] without clear organizational
structures, [and] without a command and control centre (Notes from Nowhere
2003c, 64). There is no single blueprint for a political system that will meet the
requirements of direct democracy within the GJM. Rather, the movement is the
site of repeated negotiations, discussions, and experiments with and
surrounding the ideals of direct democracy.
44

A third strand running through the GJM is the critique of capitalism, which has
both radical and reformist expressions. Activists within the reformist sections of
the movement have focused much of their critique on the growing power of
corporations and international financial institutions, arguing that these should be
reined in by governments. Others argue that what is needed is a more serious
challenge to the existence of both capital and the state (Graeber 2004, 202).
This has also been linked to critiques of the enclosure of the commons through
privatisation, which has taken on both radical and reformist guises, as when
Klein writes that, Thousands of groups today are all working against forces
whose common thread is what might broadly be described as the privatization
of every aspect of life, and the transformation of every activity and value into a
commodity (2004, 220). Each of these three strands are present to a greater or
lesser extent throughout the movement, and are manifested in a wide variety of
local and transnational struggles.
Finally, it must be emphasised that diversity is at the heart of the GJM. The
authors of Alternatives to Economic Globalization argue that diversity is key to
the vitality, resilience, and innovative capacity of any living system. So too for
human societies (Anderson et al. 2004, 89). They argue for the importance of
cultural diversity, economic diversity, and biological diversity, contrasting these
with what they see as corporations' attempts to reduce costs and increase
market control through cultural homogenization, economic specialization, and
elimination of unprofitable species (Anderson et al. 2004, 89 & 94). Diversity is
also valued within the movement, evident in the many proud proclamations that
the movement is resonating across borders of nation, class, race, gender, [and]
age (Notes from Nowhere 2003a, 312) as well as in the frequent recounting of
the wide range of struggles that constitute the movement (Graeber 2004, 205;
Notes from Nowhere 2003b, 21). The movement's ability to weave together
different visions of how to build a more sustainable and democratic world is
strongly tied to the value placed on diversity. Attempts to preserve and nurture
diversity are a continuing strand within the movement, but are also more than
that: diversity is at once the basis of the movement's structure, a tactic, and an
end-goal.

45

These strands stretch across many different struggles and many parts of the
world. Della Porta defines the movement as the loose network of organizations
[] and other actors engaged in collective action of various kinds, on the basis
of the shared goal of advancing the cause of justice (economic, social, political,
and environmental) among and between peoples around the globe (2007, 6). It
is essential to acknowledge that there are multiple versions of what constitutes
justice on a global scale, and it is useful to bear in mind the call by movement
participants for one world with room for many worlds (Marcos 1997), or for the
emergence of new stories rather than a single dominating ideology (Notes from
Nowhere 2003b, 23). Actors within the movement may be pursuing highly
localised and specific goals (that nevertheless are consonant with, and often
framed within, the concept of global justice), but they are tied to the broader
movement by communication with other activists, an analysis that recognises
the links between their own struggles and others around the world, and shared
participation in movement activities such as protests and WSFs. It will be
obvious that this definition encapsulates a large proportion of contemporary
activism, although it does not include all activism around the world. Arguably,
one of the most remarkable and significant aspects of the GJM is that it has knit
together movements from the Global North and Global South to produce a
heterogeneous and fluid, but nevertheless interlinked, network of activism and
communication.

The global justice movement and knowledge systems

Struggles over knowledge are important to the GJM because many of the most
fundamental characteristics of the movement rely on participants' access to
ICTs, and particularly to the Internet. An influential RAND study, Networks and
Netwars (Arquilla & Ronfeldt 2001), argues that there are fundamental links
between the use of networked forms of organisation, doctrine, strategy, and
technology. The use of particular technologies, strategies, and organisational
forms is not merely a pragmatic choice, but is also fundamentally tied to the
movement's ideology. In fact, we can take this one step further and argue that
the movement does not have an ideology in the traditional sense; rather, its
ideology is written in the practices of the movement itself (Croeser 2006;
Graeber 2004). As with the NSMs that preceded it and which thread through it,
46

participants within the GJM attempt to use activism itself, rooted in the actual
experience of ordinary people, as a form of governance (Wapner 1995, 336),
as a way to express and experiment with ways of bringing one world with room
for many worlds into being. The movement's project is therefore inextricably
linked to its actions and structures, and in turn to the ICTs upon which these are
built.
Firstly, the structure of the movement is in large part dependent on access to
the technologies of the Information Age. A key aspect of the movement's
organisational structure is its networked form. While there are innumerable
gatherings, manifestos, and organisations associated with the movement, it
remains a network of networks, in which sub-networks are simultaneously
overlapped and overlapping, not the tree-like hierarchy of the traditional
organisation but rather what the Zapatistas call a desmadre: a big mess
(Froehling 1999, 174). While earlier movements, particularly NSMs, were
composed of horizontal networks rather than hierarchical structures, this has
arguably been taken to a new level within the GJM. As well as leading on from
previous social movements, the mix of autonomy and connection expressed in
this loosely connected global network, composed in part by smaller subnetworks, in which different actors mobilise together and interact while at times
seeming to remain quite separate (Venter & Swart 2002b, 197) also has echoes
of the way in which websites are linked by hypertext. Just as sites on the
Internet are connected by key hub websites (Barabasi 2002), the movement is
connected by a network of nodal organisations [that] are typically in touch, on a
horizontal and spreadeagled basis, with many other initiatives and groups,
which are themselves in touch with other initiatives, groups, and individuals
(Keane 2003, 61). The similarity is more than incidental, as the World Wide
Web provides a space and a template for the global web of activism.
These networks are built on ICTs, not just the Internet but a host of other
communicative media, as well as on face-to-face communications enabled by
relatively cheap international travel. Numerous accounts of the early days of the
GJM, for example, emphasise the importance of the Zapatistas' 1996
Encuentro Against Neoliberalism and For Humanity (cf. Graeber 2004, 204;
Milburn 2004, 473; Burbach 2001, 145). This Encuentro was itself both an
47

outcome and a validation of the importance of networks. The Zapatistas had

been significantly strengthened by the emergence of a web of international
supporters who were able to act swiftly on their behalf, which would not have
been possible without the Internet (Froehling 1999). The Internet also played a
major role in the rapid organisation of the first Encuentro, which attracted about
three thousand participants from 42 countries (Froehling 1999, 169). At the
Encuentro, the leader of the Zapatistas read out a vision for an intercontinental
network of resistance which emphasised the decentralised and transnational
nature of the movement (Graeber 2004, 204-205), a vision which must have
owed much to the Zapatistas' own experience of the possibilities of networks.
Elsewhere, other sections of the movement communicate and organise through
websites, mailing lists, mobile phone communication, and at gatherings like the
Encuentros and the WSF, forming networks that cross not only borders, but also
the hazy boundary between online and offline space.
These networks are not merely a strategy or side-effect of the movement's
activities, but rather form an integral part of its mindset, with many movements
within it being marked by a cross-border mentality in which there are links and
chains of non-governmental solidarity and contestation spanning vast spaces
stretching to the four corners of the earth (Keane 2003, 61). These networks
bring with them strategic benefits, such as the ability to facilitate cross-border
flows of information and resources, but they also encourage and are dependent
on another important and frequently-cited aspect of the movement, a way of
looking at the world not so much in terms of fragmentationas many Marxists
tend to dobut of possibilities for coalitions (Escobar 1999, 49). This network
of networks is built on and through a recognition of the value of diversity. It is
also reliant on access to ICTs and other tools that allow swift, cheap,
communication within and between countries.
The GJM is constituted of struggles from all parts of the world, many different
ideologies and analyses, different perspectives on tactics and end-goals. The
movement itself is built through diversity, as are movement events:
demonstrations actually comprise a convergence of hundreds of smaller
protests, occurring at the same time and place, against a common enemy, but
for many different reasons (Venter & Swart 2002a, 121). As already noted,
48

movement participants and organisations come from all over the world: the
Zapatistas in Chiapas, Indian farmers, refugee advocates from Australia,
landless workers in Brazil, and so on. Maintaining a movement this diverse
requires a flexible master frame, which the vision of one world with room for
many worlds and the idea of justice on a global scale provides, but it also
requires much discussion and communication (della Porta et al. 2006, 62-73).
The networks discussed above play a large role in allowing discussion and
debate and connecting different local struggles. The GJM's ability to incorporate
diversityand thus to exist in its current formwould not be possible without
access to the knowledge systems that enable these networks.
Secondly, the ability to access, analyse, and disseminate knowledge effectively
is a vital tool for GJM activists. If we are indeed entering a new phase of
capitalism in which production has come to mean controlling complex systems
of information, symbols, and social relations (Melucci 1996, 100), the ability to
use information effectively will be key to the future success or failure of the
movement. In fact, through their creation of conditions that allow information to
act in viral-like ways, the complex communication systems of advanced
capitalism create lacunae or dark spots where institutional control becomes
increasingly difficult, opening up new areas for resistance (Jordan & Taylor
2004, 20). These dark spots for control range from the personalised networks
and cells associated with terrorism through to online peer-to-peer networks, and
change their location and operations as attempts are made to bring them under
control. Given this, creation of and access to alternative information channels is
inherently political. This makes the bi-directional nature of information flow on
the Internet doubly important, which was made clear in statements from media
consultant Doug Miller in the wake of anti-Nike activism, in which he declared
that board members were becoming increasingly scared that their corporate
reputations could be blown away in two months by the Internet (Bennett 2003,
162). While the activism against Nike may have emphasised the role of the
Internet in the swift dissemination of information, it also demonstrates the
importance of creativity, symbolism and novelty.
A key strategy within the GJM is the use of emotive, novel, or amusing ways of
transmitting activists' messages. While those in both the Global North and the
49

Global South increasingly have access to huge amounts of information, it

seems probable that the capacity of individuals [particularly in the developed
world] to process, sort, select and use appropriate information may have been
diminished, in part because of the sheer volume we receive each day (Schultz
1994, 113). Facts about sweatshop wages are easily submerged among
pictures of famine in Africa, local news, ever-present advertisements and the
barrage of popular culture. Gaining attention, then, not only relies on the
construction of causal stories to explain facts and prompt action (Keck &
Sikkink 1998, 17), but also the ability to dramatise these stories and provide
emotional handholds. Jonah Perettis correspondence with Nike, in which he
requested that they stitch the word sweatshop onto his shoes, rapidly spread
around the world over email primarily because it was entertaining (Peretti 2001).
Information about Nikes abuse of workers rights was vital to the groundswell of
opposition Perettis emails helped to build, but it was carried along by the
humour and novelty of the exchanges. While access to the Internet and other
ICTs is not essential to GJM activists in spreading their message, Peretti's story
illustrates the effectiveness of the Internet in rapidly spreading well-constructed,
amusing, or emotive messages. As people throughout the world, including in the
Global South, increasingly access the Internet through their mobile phones,
such messages may spread even more quickly and widely.
Culture jamming is a particularly effective way of both intervening in mainstream
culture and creating engaging messages that spread swiftly online. Culture
jamming is the practice of parodying advertisements and hijacking billboards in
order to drastically alter their messages (Klein 2001, 310), and has crept from
the world of billboards onto the Internet with parody sites such as those set up
by the Yes Men (Ollman et al. 2003). Klein argues that although culture
jamming and related forms of activism never dry up entirely, in recent years they
have been in the midst of a revival, focused more on politics than on
pranksterism (2001, 314). This is a politics that is heavily influenced by its
prankster past and simultaneously on the lookout for new ways in which to
stimulate action. Books such as Days of War, Nights of Love (Maul et al. 2001)
and websites such as Fuck for forest (2009) and sniggle.net: The Culture
Jammers Encyclopedia (2009) blur the line between reportage, analysis,
incitement, entertainment and even pornography. Pranksterism's effectiveness
50

at reaching an audience is demonstrated by one of the Yes Men's latest stunts:

when they posed as US Chamber of Commerce officials on October 19 th, 2009,
searches for the Yes Men on Google increased by about three times the
average rate of the last twelve months in the days that followed (Google Trends
2009). Such pranksterism, when combined with the power to disseminate
information rapidly, is vital to the movement, giving activists the ability to capture
attention and support in a world of sound bites.
Finally, knowledge systems are important to the GJM because activists are in a
position of weakness relative to elites when it comes to having their analyses
and arguments recognised as authoritative. GJM activism therefore requires, at
least in part, a questioning and rethinking of how knowledge is produced and
whose knowledge is considered to be legitimate. As discussed above, the
entanglement of the language of scientific rationality with neoliberal capitalism
plays a part in sustaining support for the current system. As long as it is seen as
the only system that is realisticas, in fact, the only possibilityall attempts to
build widespread change will fail. This implies that in order to achieve their
goals, GJM activists must gain spaces in which their analyses of the problems
with neoliberalism, as well as of viable alternatives, are recognised as
legitimate.
The importance of this work is highlighted by the frequent claim by critics that
the movement is irrational or uninformed. Proponents of neoliberal globalisation
have repeatedly argued that western activists may, perhaps, be wellintentioned, but they do not understand the situation. Norberg's In Defense of
Global Capitalism, for example, is positioned as an attempt to help those who
are confused mend the error of their ways. Take the following:
Much of the criticism of globalization is based on portraying it as
something big and menacing. Often such criticism is not reasoned
argument, but flat statements of fact. Critics may say, for example, that
51 of the world's biggest economies are corporations or that
something like $1.5 trillion are moved around in financial markets every
day, as if size itself were intrinsically dangerous and terrifying. But that is
arithmetic, not argument (Norberg 2003, 11).
51

Defining movement participants as producers of legitimate knowledge is

therefore not only a part of the struggle for global justice, but also a part of the
movement's struggle to change the field of possibilities open to activists and the
power structures which limit or facilitate their work.
This is one of the reasons why the Indian movement discussed in the following
chapter has such resonance within the GJM, although there are others of
comparable importance. One of the main claims of the movement opposing GM
crops is that the scientific research referred to by economists and agricultural
scientists in support of GM crops is far from unbiased. Movement participants
use a range of techniques to destabilise these claims. Some of these
techniques involving working within the dominant scientific paradigm, by, for
example, the production of unbiased scientific studies while claiming that elite
studies are biased. Other techniques involve questioning the scientific
paradigms which GM proponents work within: activists, for example, have
argued for a more spiritual and holistic approach to agriculture, and to science.
In unsettling the legitimacy of pro-GM science, they assert their own claims to
authoritative knowledge. In a broader sense, the Indian movement contributes
to the GJM's project, and to social movement participants' need to be accepted
as legitimate speakers, by establishing the legitimacy of situated, grassroots
knowledge.
The project of rethinking and redefining knowledge systems is therefore an
integral part of the movement's struggle. From participants' ability to propose
meaningful alternatives to neoliberal globalisation through to the organisation of
the GJM itself, the shape of the GJM's project is defined by how people think
about knowledge. Additionally, particular technological systems, most notably
the Internet, continue to play a key role in facilitating communications within the
movement and between the movement and outsiders, as well as enabling the
movement's decentralised, networked structure. The spaces and technologies
opened up by globalisation and the Information Age have played a vital role in
building new movements and allowing a linkage of the local and the global;
however access to these spaces and technologies is not a given.

52

Section four: the ongoing struggle to control knowledge

As the spaces and technologies of the Information Age become sites through
which established elites are challenged, elites seek to gain control of these
spaces. Even as activist and other anti-establishment actors explore the
possibilities that new knowledge systems offer and work to redefine the way in
which we produce and access knowledge, governments, corporations, and
other elites seek to maintain their dominance over the same systems. This is
true at a variety of levels, from individual technological artefacts through to the
way in which we define science. The model of collective, peer-based knowledge
production embodied in indigenous knowledge systems and online endeavours
such as F/LOSS has repeatedly been refused legitimation or been threatened
by established actors, ranging from the Encyclopaedia Britannica through to
universities through to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
Similarly, governments and corporate actors have been exploring and
developing the potential of Information Age technologies to further surveillance
and commercial interests. This section does not attempt to exhaustively
catalogue the variety of struggles over knowledge that have been precipitated
by and interlinked with the emergence of new technologies and scientific
knowledge, but rather to emphasise the contested nature of knowledge by
outlining a few important battles.
It must be recognised that different actors have vastly different interests that
they are trying to further in their attempts to control knowledge. Political elites
may be motivated to engage in data collection about citizens by concerns of
efficiency in service provision. They may wish to protect vulnerable sectors of
the population, particularly children. They may also wish to secure crucial
networks or data, control internal dissent, or raise barriers to external threats.
Many attempts are currently underway by established economic elites to
preserve existing business models, but this is not the only motivation for elites'
attempts to control knowledge. Industries, corporations, and even individuals
within the business world are driven by the desire to open new markets as well
as to be able to access important research or information. Often, the interests of
these different actors clash. Within government, as well as within the business
world, competing interests complicate any simple reading of elite attempts to
control knowledge. Nevertheless, there are a number of broad trends that have
53

emerged in recent years that are worth noting: a second enclosure of the
commons, increased surveillance, and resistance to peer-produced knowledge
systems.

Enclosure of the commons

Interest in the concept of enclosure has been growing in a number of fields, and
within activist circles, since the 1980s. The term refers to the privatisation of
public commons: the first period of enclosure is usually seen as being the era
that began in the late 1400s in England and continued throughout the following
centuries, during which common land used by the poor became private property
owned by the rich (Patel 2007, 76). The question of whether we are facing a
new period of enclosure or a new phase in an ongoing process is debatable.
The concept has been applied to a wide variety of processes by those within the
GJM, ranging from environmental degradation in the Global South (Midnight
Notes Collective 1990, 1-2) through to the spread of advertising into public
spaces and the patenting of genes (Klein 2004, 220). Significant attention has
also been paid to extensions to copyright terms and other infringements of the
public domain of culture, most notably by Lessig (2001; 2004) and Boyle (2008).
Finally, Benkler has also used the term to refer to attempts to control the
development of hardware and software design, as well as of the structure of the
Internet (2006, 385). Some of these processes are only indirectly related to
struggles over knowledge. For the purposes of this thesis, there are three broad
areas of enclosure that are important: enclosure of genetic diversity, enclosure
of the public domain of culture, and enclosure of the digital commons. Each of
these will be discussed in more detail in following chapters.
Developments in biotechnology have opened up a number of new possibilities
over previous decades, including the ability to sequence genes and to modify
living organisms at the level of individual genes, rather than through the slower
processes of plant breeding and animal husbandry. There are many different
directions that biotechnology research could take, and different responses to
current technologies. Bollier has argued that current research has been driven
by the tendency towards agricultural systems based on monocultures, the
consolidation of the seed industry, and the search for a more market-friendly
product (2002, 76). For this reason, and because biotechnology research has
54

been largely driven by private interests (Benkler 2006, 332 & 337),
biotechnology research and the context in which it takes place has tended to
cement and extend corporate control over agriculture, and to extend the reach
of commercial interests into new arenas, such as indigenous medicine systems.
One aspect of this process of enclosure which will be discussed in more detail
in the following chapter is bioprospecting, also called biopiracy by its critics.
This is the conversion of cultural knowledge and biological resources into
marketable products, as in the case of the production of a treatment for
Hodgkinson's disease from Madagascar's rosy periwinkle. Examples of this
process range from the Merck pharmaceutical company's purchase of around
10,000 genetic samples from Costa Rica through to the ownership claims made
over the gene pool of isolated populations in Tonga and Iceland and over genes
expressed in a family with a rare congenital illness (Bollier 2002, 79-81). This
enclosure of biological and genetic diversity has been facilitated by the
extension of intellectual property law, through both national and international
institutions.
Over the last three decades, a number of key court cases and international
institutions have expanded corporate control over genetic diversity. In the
1970s, the US provided expanded formal intellectual property protection for the
private sector via the Plant Variety Protection Act (Falcon & Fowler 2002, 199).
In 1980, in Diamond vs Chackrabarty, the US Supreme Court distinguished
between products of nature and a patentable genetically modified bacterium,
and ruled that live, genetically modified organisms are patentable (Rhoten &
Powell 2007, 351). In 1987, the US Patent Trade Office ruled that patents were
allowed on non-naturally occuring non-human multicellular living organisms,
including animals (USPTO in Rhoten & Powell 2007, 351). These shifts allowed
increased scope for patents in the areas of genetics and biotechnology, and
consolidated the US view of equivalence between discovery and invention
(Rhoten & Powell 2007, 352). Effects of these shifts reach beyond the borders
of the US, in large part because of the recent drive towards harmonisation of
intellectual property law through international regimes.

55

Harmonisation of intellectual property law at the international level has a

tendency to involve shifts towards the most expansive interpretations of
intellectual property law. International institutions that regulate the control of
genetic resources used in agriculture, medicine, and other applications reflect
this tendency. The WTO agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of International
Property Rights (TRIPS), which came into effect in 1995, contains a clause
which requires WTO members to provide for the patenting of non-biological
and microbiological processes (WTO 1994). The clause, Article 27.3(b), allows
members to exclude plants, animals, and essential biological processes from
patentability, but members must provide patents or other protections for plant
varieties. This article remains controversial as it requires that member states
allow patents on life. Other international institutions and agreements have had
similar effects, extending the control that states and private interests have over
genetic resources. For example, the Convention on Biological Diversity,
completed in 1992 with the intention of protecting biodiversity, has had the
effect of encouraging national legislation which prioritises restrictions on access
to biodiversity resources (Falcon & Fowler 2002, 209). The international
intellectual property regime surrounding genetic resources has expanded
considerably over previous decades, and in combination with changes to
national legislation in many states has radically increased the framework for
control of genetic resources.
The expansion in intellectual property regimes has also had effects on cultural
content, acting to counter the tendencies encouraged by ICTs. Whereas
research and development in biotechnology has tended to support tighter
control over genetic resources, the ICT revolution has tended to make the
sharing and distribution of cultural content between peers easier. Elites, from
large content industries such as those represented by the Recording Industry
Association of America (RIAA) to governments, have found it more and more
difficult to control the flow of music, movies, documents, and other information.
The expansion of intellectual property rights and development of protection
mechanisms for these rights has been one way in which elites attempt to regain
lost control. US corporations, in concert with the US government, have been at
the forefront of efforts to develop these mechanisms. The extension of copyright
terms in 1976, 1998, and again in 2003 has played an important role in limiting
56

the public domain in the US; as a report from the Tomales Bay Institute notes,
one effect of these extensions has been that while Disney has based many of
its films and characters on stories taken from the public domain, none of its
works have been returned to this domain (2003, 19). Other expansions of
intellectual property rights in the US, such as the Digital Millennium Copyright
Act (DMCA) of 1998, accompanied these copyright extensions, adding new
provisions; the DMCA, for example, makes it illegal to circumvent technological
protection measures that limit access to content.
Harmonisation of intellectual property law at the international level has, as in
the case of genetic resources, tended to expand rather than reduce the scope
of intellectual property rights over cultural content. At times, the US has also
attempted to create more expansive intellectual property protections nationally
by working through international regimes, as the Clinton administration seemed
to do in the mid-1990s through their involvement in WIPO (Samuelson 1997, 3).
As well as working through international intellectual property regimes, the US
has entered into a number of bilateral trade agreements over the last few years
which have prioritised intellectual property rights, overcoming trading partners'
aversion to stronger property rules by exchanging concessions in other areas
(Fink & Reichenmiller 2006). The effect of US government activism in
expanding international intellectual property regimes has been significant, and
more restrictive understandings of content ownership have taken a firm hold in
the international system.

Surveillance
ICTs, and their widespread adoption throughout everyday life by those in the
Global North, have vastly increased the ease with which governments can
watch and listen in on citizens' activities. The most well-known example of the
surveillance enabled by new technologies is London's closed-circuit television
(CCTV) network; around 500,000 CCTVs blanket London, with a growing
organisational infrastructure for their use by police (Schneier 2008; Bowcott
2008). Other examples abound, from the bill passed in 2008 in Sweden that will
allow law enforcement and intelligence agencies to monitor international
telephone and electronic communications (Goodin 2008; Montgomery 2008)
57

through to the 2007 confirmation that AT&T had facilities capable of copying and
analysing substantial amounts of US Internet traffic (Singel 2007), through to
the 2008 discovery that the Chinese government was archiving millions of text
messages sent through Skype (Leonard 2008). While the Internet and other
communications networks decrease the cost and difficulty of communication for
grassroots actors, they also make it easier and more tempting for governments
to surveille their citizens and those in other states. However, government
surveillance is facilitated not just by the availability of technological means, but
also by enabling legislation and willing (or at least accepting) publics.

Resistance to peer-produced knowledge

The final aspect of struggles over knowledge to be discussed here are attempts
to delegitimise or otherwise resist peer-produced knowledge systems that have
been enabled or affected by new technologies. This struggle has numerous
dimensions; it is reflected in the claims that indigenous oral knowledge does not
constitute prior art that have been prevalent in patent disputes over neem and
turmeric, as well as in responses to the emergence of Wikipedia. For example,
the rebuttal issued by Encyclopaedia Britannica to a Nature article that
compared it with Wikipedia emphasised the fact that Wikipedia allows anyone,
regardless of knowledge or qualifications, to write and edit articles on any
subject, and referred to it as a database rather than an encyclopaedia (2006,
1). Attempts by political, economic, and academic elites to maintain their hold
on authority by determining the terms by which knowledge should be
considered legitimate are by no means new, although new battles have begun
to be fought over recent decades. These struggles, as well as those discussed
previously in this section, will be discussed in more detail in coming chapters.
Each struggle discussed here, and throughout this work, involves the
overlapping deployment of legal, technological, and cultural strategies for
exerting control. In the case of biotechnological research, the technological
ability to sequence and manipulate genomes would not be enough in itself to
expand private control over genetic resources. The expansion of patent and
copyright law, and the creation of a cultural discourse that is willing to accept
the extension of this law to cover genes or organisms, have also played a vital
58

role. Similarly, the convergence of technological protection measures, changes

to national and international intellectual property regimes, and a discourse that
frames the sharing of content as piracy have also played a role in elites'
attempts to gain control over the emerging realm of digital content. The first
section of this chapter emphasised the interlinkage of science and technology
with other power structures. This interlinkage is ever-present in struggles over
technology and its effects; actors with competing interests may prioritise action
in one area, but ultimately strategies that attempt to gain control purely through
the development of new technologies (or new legal regimes, or through another
such single dimension) are unlikely to succeed.
As these struggles shift between the local, the national and the global level,
they are also heavily influenced by the many inequalities that are written
throughout the international system. Historically, the North has relied
extensively on the Global South for food crop varieties and raw resources.
Today, new international intellectual property regimes have made it easier for
corporations in the North to lay claim to the South's genetic resources (Falcon &
Fowler 2002, 208-209). Similarly, struggles over knowledge tend to privilege
knowledge-systems

associated

with

western

science,

with

indigenous

knowledge systems either being rifled through and incorporated in research

(often by corporations) or dismissed. Concerns over national security and
increasing surveillance, while affecting citizens throughout the world, have
disproportionately affected those from the Global South, and ethnic and
religious minorities within the North which have roots in the Global South. From
the micro- to the macro-level the effects of new technologies and struggles over
how they will develop and be used are linked to other power structures.

Conclusion
The first section of this chapter outlined a critical approach to knowledge. This
approach sees science, technology, and access to information as closely
related and overlapping, and as inherently and always affected by and
constitutive of other power structures. These power structures, from gender to
economic systems to the mechanisms of government, shape the way in which
we define, develop, and access systems of knowledge, and are at the same
59

time shaped by such systems. Further, while some systems of knowledge may
encourage certain tendenciesas, for example, the Internet facilitates
decentralisationthese tendencies are never fixed. As new branches of science
or new technologies develop and begin to be used, the process of contestation
which shaped them continues. In the case of the Internet, this is manifested in
attempts by political and corporate elites to gain tighter control over how the
Internet is used. In the case of biotechnology, groups around the world are
attempting to lever control of key technologies and genetic resources from the
hands of private interests. These struggles will, in turn, have political effects.
The second section of this chapter discussed the various ways in which new
forms of knowledge have both enabled shifts in capitalist production and been
harnessed and shaped by capitalist elites. At the same time, as the third section
of this chapter showed, shifts in knowledge systems have facilitated the
emergence of the GJM, which is struggling to create more democratic,
sustainable, and diverse forms of globalisation. The contest over the form of
globalisation takes many forms, and is taking place throughout the world.
Struggles over knowledge make important contributions to this contest.
As I will discuss in greater detail in following chapters, struggles over knowledge
are likely to have direct and far-reaching effects on the GJM's work. Neoliberal
capitalism and the GJM are both deeply integrated with new forms of
knowledge, using the technologies of the Information Age not just as useful
tools, but also in ways which affect their inherent character. Activists within the
GJM therefore have a strong interest in directly contesting measures taken by
elites to gain a firmer grasp on knowledge systems. The work, and very
existence, of the GJM relies in many ways on retaining, or further expanding,
democratic control over knowledge.
Many activists today are intensely aware of these issues and have been heavily
involved in struggling for more democratic visions of science and technology.
Some of these activists are working outside the various networks that make up
the GJM, as is the case with participants in the digital liberties movement.
Attempts by activists to collaboratively design software and to retain a relatively
accessible structure for the Internet have not yet gained wide attention within
60

the GJM, despite the tactical and strategic importance of each of these projects
to GJM activism. Intellectual property, on the other hand, has become a hot
topic within the GJM, particularly as it applies to living beings. This is both a
result of, and a factor in, the prominence given to anti-GM struggles throughout
the world, and particularly in India. It may not be immediately apparent, but
these struggles are part of the same project. The chapters that follow will
explore the ways in which these struggles over knowledge contribute to the
broader work of the GJM.

61

Chapter Two
Opposition to genetically modified crops in India: who
knows best when it comes to agriculture?
Introduction
Biotechnology is just as vital to the emerging Information Age as developments
in other ICTs. The ability to sequence and modify genes, and even to create
new life forms, has the potential to radically transform the world in which we
live. This possibility is increasingly likely as biotechnological measures are
proposed as possible solutions to the problems caused by climate change,
ranging from enhanced carbon-fixing trees to crops adapted to new conditions.
The direction in which biotechnology will develop is not fixed. As with other
technologies, there are a number of different models emerging. Research into
use of the bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) toxin in pest control exemplifies this; Bt has
been inserted into the genes of cotton, tomato, and corn and marketed by
private agrochemical corporations, but it has also been used extensively in what
is usually considered to be organic farming in Cuba, and in China development
of Bt varieties has been predominantly by public institutions. In each of these
cases, the model of scientific research, aims, and dissemination of results have
been radically different. In part, the shift towards research models that produce
technological solutions, including GM crops, has been linked to an increasingly
close relationship between biotechnology and ICTs. Biotechnology relies heavily
on increased computing power, and biological metaphors such as resilience and
evolution are increasingly used to develop computing and networking
capabilities. Most notably, research into and use of biotechnology, as with other
ICTs, is fraught with questions relating to what has come to be known as
intellectual property, as well as with the inclusiveness and accessibility of the
research process.
This chapter examines the debate over biotechnology in India, focusing in
particular on activism within the Indian state of Karnataka (see map below).
Although the most well-known Indian opponents of GM crops are based in the
62

north of India, Karnataka has been the site of some of the largest mobilisations
around GM crops. As with all social movements, the movement opposing GM
crops in India is heterogeneous and fluid, made up of groups and individuals
with varying perspectives and levels of involvement. The Karnataka Rajya
Raitha Sangha (Karnataka State Farmers' Association, KRRS) was particularly
instrumental in mobilising farmers around Bt cotton, which was opposed as part
of a broader resistance to neoliberal globalisation. At the same time, there has
been a growing movement within India working to promote organic and
traditional agriculture, much of which overlaps significantly with the anti-GM
movement. Through activism inside India as well as international connections
(which will be discussed further in the fourth chapter), this movement has been
working to redefine the debate over GM crops.

Map of India
This chapter discusses the movement in two parts, the first of which has been
primarily involved in opposing GM crops, while the second has been promoting
alternatives to GM crops and the input-heavy monocultures associated with
Green Revolution agriculture. Each section of the movement is roughly
associated with a particular set of actors and analytical frameworks, and
engages in distinct activities. Separating discussion of the movement into two
sections therefore allows a certain structural and analytical clarity that is
63

necessary given the range of issues involved. However, it must be emphasised

that the movement is messy; many groups and individuals fit into both sections
of the movement, and frames that I have associated with one section of the
movement are called upon on occasion by the other.
The first section of this chapter focuses on the opposition to GM crops. The
nature of the GM crop first introduced to India, Bt cotton, and the strength of
pre-existing social movements encouraged the take-up of the issue by farmers'
groups, rather than environmentalists. The KRRS has been the most important
of these groups, focusing attention on the issue through mass mobilisations and
direct actions. The involvement of the KRRS and other such groups has led to
the debate being predominantly structured in terms of GM crops' effects on
farmers, rather than their potential to cause harm to the environment or to
human health. Opposition to GM crops has been approached through frames
already adopted by the KRRS and other farmers' groups, such as Gandhian
discourse

about

swadeshi

(village-level

self-sufficiency),

conceptual

distinction between rural and urban India, and the emerging opposition to
neoliberal globalisation. This section of the movement has, through these
frames, argued that GM crops (like commercial hybrids) are expensive,
unprofitable, and make Indian farmers dependent on MNCs.
The second section of this chapter focuses on those participants who are
promoting alternatives to GM crops. This part of the movement has largely gone
unrecognised by those studying the opposition to GM crops, perhaps because
participants' activities tend to be small-scale, highly localised, and nonconfrontational, and therefore have received little media attention. The work
within this part of the movement centres on preserving and promoting traditional
crop varieties and agricultural techniques, and is often framed within an
ecofeminist or development discourse. While many of those involved in this
work actively oppose GM crops, it is part of a broader opposition to agricultural
techniques associated with the Green Revolution, including monocropping and
the use of purchased seed and chemical pesticides and fertilisers. Participants
have continually worked to establish the benefits of traditional agricultural
systems, including traditional knowledge developed by rural communities. They
64

have

also

resisted

the

enclosure

of

the

commons

associated

with

commercialisation of Indian plant varieties.

The third section of this chapter addresses some of the more problematic
aspects of this movement's work, including some of the unintended
consequences of their framing of the debate. While the ecofeminist discourse of
some movement leaders, particularly Vandana Shiva, has gained a wide
audience overseas, it seems not to have gained a foothold in India. This has a
number of implications, possibly the most important of which is that the
opposition to GM crops within India has been framed almost entirely by
arguments that do not oppose GM crops for their inherent qualities. The debate
over GM crops has not primarily been framed in terms of the possible harms or
moral qualities of genetically modified organisms, but rather on the basis of the
traits, costs, and other characteristics of particular GM crops, including Bt
cotton. Arguments that GM crops are unprofitable, instruments of foreign
domination, or part of a system of chemical-based agriculture are necessarily
open to debate, as has been amply demonstrated by dissenting voices within
and in opposition to the movement, as well as by those engaged in widespread
pirating of Bt cotton. This pirating, and the lack of effective government
response to it, suggest that opponents of GM crops may have already lost the
battle in India. GM crops have gained a firm foothold, and several such crops
have a significant following among farmers in some areas. However, their
interventions into the debate have made a significant impact on the national and
international discourse surrounding biotechnology.

Section one: the opposition to genetically modified crops in

India
In the West, opposition to genetically modified organisms (GMOs) has usually
rested on their potential to cause damage to the environment, or harm
consumers. For example, an Australian government report noted concerns
raised by consumer and community groups about GMOs' potential impacts on
food safety and the environment (Anderson & Lee 2005, 1), while stating that
any reticence to adopt GM crops on the part of farmers is due to concerns over

65

access to GMO-free markets such as Japan and Europe (Anderson & Lee
2005, 13). Resistance to GMOs in the West has been dominated by consumer
and environmental groups, particularly Greenpeace, with limited involvement of
producers6. Effects on food safety and the environment are highlighted, and
there is little discussion of potential damage to producers. A representative antiGMO pamphlet reads,
GM foods on the market have not undergone adequate testing to ensure
that they are safe to eat and safe for the environment. [...] GM foods are
released into the environment without proper understanding of their wider
ecological effects or control requirements (Campaign to keep Western
Australia GM Free 2008).
While the pamphlet discusses the high royalty charges for farmers, it is clear
that the pamphlet is aimed at consumers, who are asked to [r]emind a farmer
about the benefits of staying GM free. The framing of GMOs as a Pandora's
Box that will expose consumers and the environment to unforeseen damage
refers back to the precautionary principle, which is in outlined in Principle 15 of
the Rio Declaration (1992): Where there are threats of serious or irreversible
environmental damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a
reason for postponing measures to prevent environmental degradation. As it
applies to GMOs, this principle is used to argue that the potential impact of
GMOs on the environment is vast, unknowable, and irreversible. Essentially,
these concerns cannot be addressed by the scope of any foreseeable study or
by changes to how GMOs are developed. The speed with which radical
changes can be made to an organism using GM technology, and the difficulties
involved in isolating GMOs from other organisms in the food chain and
ecosystem, mean that these arguments leave little room for future acceptance
of GMOs.
In India, the situation is significantly different. Although opposition to GMOs in
India is heterogeneous, arguments against them predominantly position them
6

There are several Canadian farmers who have been actively involved in the opposition to
GM crops (Greenpeace Australia Pacific 2009), but this activism remains limited in scope.

66

as the extreme form of pre-existing trends, and highlight effects on farmers.

Threats to human health, writes Herring, have figured only secondarily, in
contrast to the European opposition, which he argues may be due to the
reality of some Maslovian hierarchy of needs in a poor country (2001, 2). The
argument that Indians do not care about possible health consequences of
GMOs because they cannot afford to is beguiling, but it is not the whole story. In
the West, concern over health consequences of GMOs has largely been the
outcome of years of concerted activism. In India, activists have drawn upon
other oppositional discourses in order to frame the debate. Existing opposition
to changes to Indian agriculture made during the Green Revolution (the shift
towards monocropping, chemical-intensive agriculture, the use of hybrid crop
varieties, dependence on commercial seed, and entry of foreign agrochemical
companies into the Indian seed market) have been extended to include GM
crops. Similarly, critiques of the commercialisation of indigenous plant varieties
from the Global South and the accompanying body of international intellectual
property (IP) law have been developed in tandem with and extended to cover
the critique of GM crops. Although there are exceptions, Indian arguments
against GMOs tend to rest on the particular crops, legal regimes, and research
models involved, rather than being built on inherent critiques of genetic
engineering.
The first GM crop to be introduced to India was Bt cotton, a transgenic crop
variety based on the insertion of the Cry1a gene from the bacterium Bacillus
thuringensis, which makes the plants resistant to the boll weevil, a common
cotton pest. The first Bt cotton seeds were imported to India for research
purposes in 1995 by Mahyco in partnership with Monsanto 7, and field trials
began in 2000. In 2002, the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC)
gave permission for Bt cotton, marketed as Bollgard, to be sold commercially.
However, Bt cotton was grown commercially in India before 2002; in 2001 it was
discovered by Mahyco that cotton planted over thousands of hectares in Gujarat
contained the Bt gene. This cotton seems to have appeared in around 1999,
and was traced back to Navbharat-151, sold by the Navbharat seed company
7

Mahyco is India's largest seed company, and Monsanto bought a 26% stake in it in order to
link in to Mahyco's distribution network. Mahyco Monsanto Biotech (India) Pvt Ltd is a joint
venture marketing company created in 1998 in order to market Bt cotton.

67

(Stone 2007a, 85). The head of Navbharat claimed that the company had not
been aware that there was a Bt gene in its seeds. GEAC ordered that
Navbharat-151 seeds, and crosses bred from them, be burned, but did not have
the capacity to effectively enforce the decision (Herring 2008, 134). As a
consequence, both legal and illegal Bt cotton varieties are now common in
many parts of India.
The fact that it was cotton that led the way for GM crops in India is significant.
While other GM crops have since been introduced, much of the debate
continues to focus on cotton. Cotton is a key crop within India, and as well as
being vital to the economy it was a powerful symbol of protest against British
colonialism during the struggle for Independence (Ramamurthy 2004, 751).
Gandhi encouraged Indians to spin and weave their own cotton, khadi, and
official rules stipulate that the Indian flag be made of khadi. As well as the
symbolic associations attached to cotton, the use of a cash crop rather than a
food crop as the vanguard entry to the Indian market undermined use of the
pro-poor discourse associated with GM cassava in Africa and Golden Rice, both
of which are food staples. Cotton is not grown by subsistence farmers, as it
needs a minimum level of investment. Growing cotton requires inputs, most of
which must be purchased: seeds, irrigation, fertilisers, pesticides. At the same
time, it must be emphasised that the majority of farmers growing cotton in India
are not well off. Further, it is worth noting that cotton yields in India are relatively
low in India by global standards8 (Grure, Mehta-Bhatt, & Sengupta 2008, 10).
In contrast to Australia, where farm sizes are over 360 hectares on average
(Cotton Australia 2008), and the US, where an increasing amount of cotton
production takes place on large family farms earning over US$500,000 a year
(Macdonald et al. 2006), a large farmer in India might plant around 20 acres of
cotton. The average cotton farm size in India is between 2.4 and 5 hectares
(Gandhi & Namboodiri 2006, 9). At the time of Bt cotton's entry to India, suicide
rates in rural areas had reached epidemic proportions, and the main victims had
been cotton farmers, especially small and marginal farmers (Stone 2002a).
Given the context, it is unsurprising that the entry of GM crops into India was
8

It is also important to recognise that cotton consumes about 45 per cent of pesticides used in
Indian agriculture, placing cotton farmers in a particularly vulnerable position due to
dependence on the price of pesticides (Grure, Mehta-Bhatt, & Sengupta 2008, 10).

68

primarily framed as an issue affecting farmers, rather than consumers or the

environment.
It is also notable that while there have been a number of prominent
environmental movements in India, particularly the Chipko movement,
environmental activism in the south of India has been limited. Muzaffar Assadi
argues that although many groups in the South have taken up environmental
causes, particularly since the 1980s, these struggles remained specific to
certain areas or local cultures, and Karnataka has not developed a
comprehensive environmental movement (2004, 199). Over the last decade, a
number of environmental NGOs have established themselves in Karnataka,
including Greenpeace and the ESG, but as yet it remains difficult to identify a
comprehensive environmental movement within the state. It may be, however,
that environmental movements in Karnataka will take on a different form from
those in the West. This may result in part from the work of groups that address
environmental issues through the prism of other frames, such as ecofeminism,
swadeshi, or opposition to economic globalisation, as will be discussed below.
Karnataka has also seen limited anti-GM activism on the part of consumers,
particularly the middle-class activism that has been associated with anti-GM
activism in the West9. Divya Raghunandan, the manager of Greenpeace India's
anti-GM campaign between 2005 and 2007, attributes this in part to the uneven
benefits of development:
Middle class activism has been low, and theres a clear distinction
between those who benefit from the development paradigm and those
who dont. And its those who dont whove always been mobilised, and
the farmers groups also, theyve been mobilised, any mass mobilisation
you see in India are those groups. The middle class has really not done
that much. (2006, pers. comm., Feb 7)
9

It is frequently claimed that anti-GM activism in the West is predominantly a middle-class

issue (cf. Life Sciences Network 2003; O'Neill 2003). There is some evidence for this. For
example, Hall and Moran (2006, 32) find that Scottish anti-GM survey respondents were
significantly more highly educated than the general population. However, more research is
needed if this claim is to be confirmed.

69

This lack of middle-class activism is in part responsible for a frame that

prioritises effects of GM crops on farmers. This has been changing over recent
years. In January 2009, a blog was set up to publicise anti-GM activism (GM
Free Karnataka 2009). The shift towards blogging as a medium for activism, the
use of English, and the blog's consumer-focused slogan, What will they test on
you next?, all suggest an emphasis on trying to mobilise a middle-class
audience. These efforts, however, are still in their infancy.
In contrast to the limited presence of environmental and consumer activism,
farmers' movements have had a notable presence in India, and Karnataka, at
intervals since the colonial era. Peasant movements emerged in the early
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but the most important movement
Karnataka has seen in recent times has been the KRRS. The KRRS was part of
a wave of farmers' movements10 that emerged in India during the 1960s and
peaked in the 1980s (Brass 1995a). Brass argues,
it is impossible to ignore or underestimate the powerful effects the
farmers movements have had on local, regional and national politics in
India

throughout

the

last

decade.

Their

impact

extends

from

demonstrations, blocking the food transportation systems, denying

officials access to villages, refusing to pay outstanding bills...and
withholding crops from local markets (which results in price rises) to an
important role in the overthrow of Rajiv Gandhi's Congress government
in the 1989 elections (1995a, 3-4).
As is the case with other social movements, the influence of the KRRS has
waxed and waned over time. In its early years, says one farmer, the green
towels [worn over the shoulder as a sign of membership in the KRRS] became
a menacing symbol for the authorities and for bureaucrats as farmers pressed
their demands and various large agitations were carried out (Tippanna 2006,
pers. comm., Feb 15). Demonstrations in the early 1980s gained widespread
10

The KRRS and other farmers' movements exist in the space between social movements and
more formally structured organisations. Nanjundaswamy describes the structure of the
organisation as highly decentralised, but in the same place he emphasises that the KRRS
is a movement (1998b, 155).

70

and spontaneous sympathy and some protests were supported by students,

lawyers, and political parties (Assadi 1997, 55-56). Over time, partly as a result
of the splitting of the movement into separate factions, its influence decreased.
Even at the peak of its power, it was difficult to gauge popular support and
involvement; Nanjundaswamy estimated at one point that KRRS membership
stood at around ten million (1998a, 152), but when the KRRS put candidates up
for election support was limitedin 1994 only one candidate was elected to the
State Assembly (Assadi 1997, 83). Despite the limited political support for the
KRRS, leaders from a range of political parties still continue to visit Karnataka's
Dharwad and Gadag districts, which are associated with the farmers'
movement, to pay tribute to the two farmers whose deaths sparked the birth of
the KRRS (Mohan 2003), and the KRRS remained a powerful actor in
Karnataka in the 1990s, when GM crops were introduced to the state.
Consequently, the KRRS has played a significant role in the opposition to GM
crops, not only within Karnataka but also nationally and, to an extent,
internationally. The KRRS constituted the core of organized opposition in India
during the 1990s (Herring 2001, 7), but other farmers' movements have also
played a significant role, and there are signs that others may take over the
central role once played by the KRRS. Farmers' movements have also been
among those calling most vocally for access to GM crops, which will be
discussed below. Farmers' movements have been tremendously significant
actors in this debate, and it is necessary to understand something of the history
of the KRRS and the way in which their changing analysis and focus have been
brought to bear on the opposition to GM crops. The KRRS has, roughly,
followed a similar pattern to social movements elsewhere, moving from a
predominantly class-based analysis to a new social movements model in which
social and post-materialist issues were addressed and, over the last decade,
to a global justice frame. This history has been reflected in the framing of GM
crops.
During the early years of the KRRS its focus, like that of other farmers'
movements of the era, was primarily on economic issues affecting farmers. The
focus on remunerative prices is seen as a characteristic feature of this wave of
71

farmers' movements, as were demands for lower costs for inputs and higher
returns for outputs (Brass 1995b, 36; Assadi 1994, 215). The water levy
protests that sparked the formation of the KRRS and introduced an element of
militancy to the movement were a case of direct demands being made for
economic concessions from the state government (Mohan 2003). The KRRS
during the 1980s was primarily a protest movement focusing on agricultural
issues, including terms of trade unfavourable to agriculture, declining per capita
income and purchasing power of farmers, increasing cost of input prices, low
prices for agricultural crops, increasing poverty, growing indebtedness, and an
urban-biased state policy (Assadi 2004, 205). This concern with farmers'
economic conditions has been an ongoing focus within the movement.
While left-wing political theorists such as Lohia were influential in movement
leaders' analysis of the relationship between farmers and the Indian state during
this period, it is the Gandhian discourse of Bharat's oppression by India that has
been most significant to the farmers' movements' discourse. The distinction
between Bharat and India is a vital part of Indian politics and has played a
significant role in this discourse. Sharad Joshi, leader of the Shetkari
Sanghatana farmers' movement in Maharashtra, contrasted Bharat, the
vernacular name denoting the ordinary, the rural, the little tradition, the real
country of small peasants and agricultural labourers, with [India,] the Western,
urban, industrial, internationally oriented, modern nation-state (Gupta 1998,
80). The KRRS has taken up the concept with enthusiasm, positioning itself as
a village movement built on the Gandhian concept of swadeshi: national self
reliance firmly rooted in the idea of rural reconstruction (Assadi 1994, 218).
Nanjundaswamy has written that the final objective of the KRRS is the Village
Republic and that this determines the organisation of the movement itself, with
the basic unit of organising being the autonomous village unit (Nanjundaswamy
1998b, 155). This vision of Bharat conjures up images of an undifferentiated
peasantry, a harmonious agricultural society that is threatened from without but
with a unity of interests within 11. The Bharat/India distinction and the associated
11

Talking to Somalingiah, one of the oldest members of the KRRS, I asked how he felt about
the inequalities that have traditionally existed between men and women and as a result of
the caste system. He replied that The question is mostly between the city and upper class,
in the lower classes [in the villages] there is mostly equality. No more no less (Somalingiah
& Prasad 2006, pers. comm., Feb 23).

72

Gandhian framework have continued to play a large part within the discourse of
the KRRS.
At the same time as the movement has deployed this uniquely Indian discourse,
it has also used language and protest repertoires frequently linked with the
NSMs that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s in other parts of the world. Several
scholars of Indian farmers' movements have argued that farmers' movements
are also NSMs. Banaji, for example, argues that these movements display
several features that distinguish them from earlier, class-based movements,
including a relatively articulate leadership, extraordinary skills in holding the
attention of the media [...] and [innovative] agitational methods, as well as
involvement in the 'post-material' and social issues associated with NSMs
(1994, 228). Nanjundaswamy, the charismatic leader of the KRRS (and, after its
split, of one faction of the movement) has been vocal in support of non-dowry
and inter-caste marriages, women's rights (Assadi 1994, 213), language
movements (Kannada, the local language, is seen as an embattled and vital
aspect of Kannadigan identity), and other struggles that go beyond the direct
expression of farmers' class interests. Arguably, the adoption of the language of
NSMs intensified during the late 1990s as the KRRS began to participate in
international activist networks. Nanjundaswamy's (1998b) descriptions of a
movement committed to cultural change, challenging patriarchal structures,
direct democracy, decentralised organisation, nonviolence, and ecological
approaches is a model NSM. However, this rhetoric seems to largely have been
confined to movement leaders, and has had a limited influence at the
grassroots level.
The shift towards a critique of neoliberalism has been far more significant
amongst movement participants. Until the mid-1990s, the movement had
analysed India's position within the international system within the framework of
a variant of Third World dependency theory that saw Indian capital as exploited
and oppressed by western or international capitalism (Assadi 1994, 220). The
shift towards a critique of neoliberal globalisation first began to manifest in the
early 1990s as the Indian government increasingly became a party to neoliberal
globalisation. At first the KRRS focused on MNCs, particularly those based in
73

the US, as the agents of neoliberalism (Assadi 1995, 193), but later
neoliberalism as a whole came under fire. Within the movement this shift is
attributed to Nanjundaswamy's leadership. Somalingiah, a member of the
KRRS since its inception, and Prasad, a current member, say that after the
Dunkel Draft12 came out Nanjundaswamy analysed what was happening and
presented it step by step, and it was clear. This helped to begin a mass
movement against neoliberal globalisation, convincing farmers of the need for
action (Somalingiah & Prasad 2006, pers. comm. Feb 23). Assadi argues that in
fact the shift came as the movement began to contest neoliberalism from within
a domestic framework and thus came into contact with organisations and
individuals also opposing the Dunkel Draft within an anti-neoliberal framework,
particularly Vandana Shiva, Suman Sahai, Vanaja Ramprasad, and BK Keayla
(Assadi 1995, 193). The KRRS's involvement in the international opposition to
neoliberalism helped to shape their response to GM crops.
This critique of neoliberalism has not replaced the previous Gandhian
discourse. Rather, the notion of a Bharat under attack from urbanised India was
expanded to include a frame that positioned Indian farmers as under threat not
only from national policies skewed against them, but also from developments in
the international arena that the Indian government was entering into. The
movement equated neoliberal globalisation with a new era of colonisation where
national resources, production and consumption were to come under control of
MNCs (Assadi 2004, 206). Opposition to MNCs such as KFC and Cargill was
framed within a Gandhian discourse of resistance to foreign domination,
particularly the attack on KFC in 1996, which took place on January 30 th, the
anniversary of Gandhi's death. Swadeshi was positioned as not only an
alternative to morally corrupt city life, but also extended to the international
level; the KRRS spoke of linking with other movements and Southern nations to
form a Khadi curtain in opposition to neoliberalism (Assadi 1997, v). This
synthesis of Gandhian discourse and opposition to neoliberalism has proved to
be tremendously resilient and resonant within the Indian context.

12

The Dunkel Draft was a draft put together by Arthur Dunkel, director-general of the GATT, in
an attempt to produce an acceptable compromise between Northern and Southern interests
in the wake of the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations.

74

Large demonstrations against GM crops began in 1998 with the Cremate

Monsanto campaign, also called Monsanto, Quit India. The campaign was
launched on August 9th by a coalition of NGOs (Shiva 1998), and the KRRS
began its part of the campaign in November (Nanjundaswamy 1998a, 152).
Although the campaign focused on Monsanto, Nanjundaswamy said that the
KRRS and other groups involved wanted all corporate killers like Monsanto,
Novartis, Pioneer etc involved in biotechnology to leave the country (1998a,
152). As well as targeting companies other than Monsanto, Cremate Monsanto
mentioned a number of key issues that extend beyond the actions of
biotechnology companiesslogans for the campaign included not only Stop
genetic engineering and No patents on life but also Bury the WTO. From the
beginning, the debate over GM crops was clearly framed within the overlapping
discourses of swadeshi and opposition to neoliberalism.
The Cremate Monsanto campaign invoked the Independence movement and
Gandhi's legacy at various points. Even the alternative name, Monsanto, Quit
India, explicitly echoed the British out of India of the Independence struggle
(Zwick & Zwick 2000; Shiva 2000). The framing of resistance to GM crops has
been a continual theme in the Indian movement, often conceived as part of the
KRRS's wider role as a second Independence movement. Somalingiah explains
this role as an opposition to the Indian government instead of the British, again
to defend the villages:
In my younger days I was part of the Independence movement. In the
same, I am continuing my work for self-sufficient villages, Gram Swaraj,
local self-sufficiency, the Indian old system in the villages. [...] After
Independence Gandhi was killed and then the movement was stuck. The
continuation of democracy was stopped by the bureaucracy, the villages
were not self-sufficient. The farmers' association, the KRRS, is a
continuation of the Independence movement, against the government
[which is] anti-village, anti-people (Somalingiah & Prasad 2006, pers.
comm., Feb 23).

75

The positioning of anti-GM activism within an anti-colonialist context stretches

back to the opposition to the power of foreign seed companies in India, most
notably the Beeja (Seed) Satyagraha launched India-wide in 1992. The Beeja
Satyagraha was described at the time as a second Salt Satyagraha13, and it
was declared that, If the charka [the Indian spinning wheel] was the symbol of
Indian Independence, the seed is the symbol of the protection of this
independence and the farmers culture (KRRS in Assadi 2004, 208). Cremate
Monsanto was therefore part of a broader set of actions that placed opposition
to GM crops within the framework of a second Independence movement.
At the same time as Cremate Monsanto positioned opposition to GM crops
within the context of the Indian Independence movement, it also situated it
within the contemporary resistance to neoliberal globalisation. This was partly
because of the clear continuity with the KRRS's earlier actions against MNCs;
while direct actions against field trials of GM crops were significantly less
confrontational than their destruction of Cargill's depot (Scoones 2005, 35), they
were both positioned and interpreted as part of the same anti-MNC campaign.
The two framesopposition to GM crops as anti-colonialist and opposition as
anti-neoliberalare in many respects complementary, but they serve different
strategic purposes and at times come into conflict, as will be discussed further
in the fourth chapter. To a large extent, the emphasis that each frame receives
in the movement is a matter of the arena in which actors are speaking. When
speaking within India, a Gandhian frame can be a more effective way of building
opposition to GM crops. In international arenas, however, a frame that clearly
positions the struggle within Karnataka as part of a global resistance to
neoliberalism may be more useful.
Common to the framing of GM crops within both Gandhian discourse and the
opposition to neoliberalism is the positioning of GM crops as the extension of an
existing trend, the commercialisation of seed in the form of hybrids. In both
frames of resistance, commercial seeds are seen as part of a shift away from
local sovereignty. Anti-neoliberal discourse emphasises the specifically US
13

The campaign of civil disobedience begun by Gandhi, where Indians illegally produced salt
to avoid British salt taxes.

76

origin of GM seeds, objecting not just to the fact that seeds are genetically
modified but primarily to the entry of foreign (particularly US) firms into the
Indian seed market. Similarly, within the Gandhian notion of swadeshi there is
significant opposition to buying seedsgenetically modified or otherwisefrom
outside the village. Purchases outside the village are seen as diminishing the
power of farmers, and making them economically dependent on and inferior to
the city:
Local seedsI will not purchase seed, I will not purchase fertilizer,
insecticide, pesticide, tractors, I will not purchase anything which can be
prepared or made in my village. [] Globalisation wants to bring the
farmers to purchase in the cities. It saw that villagers, the local village
produced only 6 to 8 quintals per acre. So they thought that they would
give varieties that would give multiple yields. So you would come to buy
this, and money would come to the city from the village. [...] So you will
purchase the seed, and you will purchase fertiliser, and money will come
from the village to the town (Palekar 2006, pers. comm., Feb 19).
Whether GM seeds are framed as part of MNCs' erosion of Indian sovereignty,
or as part of the shift of power from Bharat to India, resistance is primarily linked
to the fact of their commercialisation rather than the fact of their being
genetically modified.
The primary method for differentiating GM crops from hybrid varieties has been
through the terminator technology frame. Terminator technology was originally
developed as a technology protection system, part of a class of Genetic Use
Restriction Technologies (GURTs), and was intended to be a way of stopping
the re-sowing of seed by producing sterile seed. The technology was initially
developed by Delta & Pine Land in 1998, which was subsequently acquired
(along with its patents) by Monsanto in 2006. Activists reframed the technology,
resisting attempts by Monsanto and others to argue that it was an effective way
of preventing the spread of GMOs into the environment (Mooney 2007, pers.
comm., Feb 22; Stone 2002b, 613). Instead, they argued that it removed
farmers' access to seed, firmly cementing corporate control over life itself.
77

The furore surrounding terminator technology was vocal, and continues to this
day. The apocalyptic tone of discussions is exemplified by Shiva's claims that
the possibility that the terminator may spread to surrounding food crops or to
the natural environment is a serious one. The gradual spread of sterility in
seeding plants would result in a global catastrophe that could eventually wipe
out higher life forms, including humans, from the planet (2000, 83). In large part
because of pressure from activists within and outside of India, Monsanto
announced in October of 1999 that they would not use terminator technology
(Shiva 2000, 85). Additionally, the Indian government banned the use of
terminator technology in 2001, as part of the Protection of Plant Varieties and
Farmers' Rights Act. Nevertheless, many Indian farmers, activists, and others in
both the West and India continue to believe that terminator technology is in use
(Stone 2002b, 613; Herring 2008, 130). In part, this may be because movement
leaders make oblique references to seeds that cannot be saved and resown,
as Vandana Shiva did during a talk I attended at the Nairobi WSF in 2007.
These references rarely make it clear that barriers to seed saving are mostly
legal and, in the case of hybrids, are because the characteristics of secondgeneration seed make it undesirable to save and re-sow, rather than because
seeds will not germinate. When I spoke to a journalist actively involved in
researching and writing on GM crops in India, and with a critical attitude to
movement perspectives, he repeatedly referred to a terminator gene and
seeds that could not be saved (Bhat 2006, pers. comm., Feb 28). The
terminator technology frame therefore continues to play a significant role in antiGM activism, both within India and internationally.
It is difficult to gauge the effect that the terminator technology frame has had on
farmers, but there are signs that it may not have had much resonance, primarily
because many farmers who are above subsistence level buy new seed each
season anyway. It is also clear that some farmers have experimented with GM
seed, including Shankarikoppar Mahalinga, one of the farmers whose land was
used for a test plot, and have found that it germinates (Herring 2008, 138).
Farmers' concerns tend to hinge more on the cost and profitability of GM
varieties, and this has therefore been a key concern within the KRRS. There are
78

ongoing debates about the profitability of Bt cotton, many of which focus on the
cost of seed. Prasad, an activist with the Nanjundaswamy faction of the KRRS,
said in an interview that farmers in districts of Karnataka using Bt seeds were
finding that the cost of production was too high, as 450 gram packets of Bt
cotton seeds cost around Rs1,600 (2006, pers. comm., Feb 20). Concerns over
the high cost of seed were echoed by a number of those I interviewed (Bhat
2006, pers. comm., Feb 28). Given the links made between farmer
indebtedness and rural suicides, these concerns have played a large part in the
debate.
The discussion of pesticides has also played a significant role in this debate, as
Bt crop varieties are advertised as reducing the need for pesticide application.
The cost of pesticides is high, and cotton in many parts of India has been
increasingly vulnerable to pest infestations (Ramamurthy 2004, 752). As well as
the financial costs involved in purchasing pesticides, the health effects of
applying several rounds of pesticide to crops are high, especially for farm
labourers. The promise of cotton varieties that can effectively resist pest
outbreaks is therefore extremely attractive to farmers, as was seen in the case
of the Navbharat variety's resilience and widespread adoption in Gujarat. Much
of the debate around Bt crops therefore turns on how effective the protection
against pests they offer is, and whether pest populations will build up resistance
to Bt toxins. The KRRS and other groups emphasise the ultimate
ineffectiveness of Bt, pointing to the need to continue use of pesticides as well
as the possibility of future resistance.
As well as concerns about the effectiveness of Bt cotton's ability to deal with
pest outbreaks, questions that apply to any other cotton variety are equally
important with Bt varieties. The insecticidal Cry 1A(c) gene expressed by Bt
crops has been bred into a number of different cotton varieties, each of which
has its own requirements in terms of inputs (such as fertilisers and water) and
yields. This has muddied the debate by creating difficulties in evaluating the
effects of Bt cotton, as there has been considerable variation in the
performance of different Bt cotton varieties (Herring 2008, 136). However, it has

79

not stopped blanket claims about the value (or lack of value) of Bt cotton by
both proponents and opponents of Bt crops.
By necessity, opponents of GM crops in India have spent much of their energy
debating these concerns with yields and high seed and other input costs. As
Omvedt (1998) points out, [f]armers may love the land they work on and their
animals [...] But they are people who are trying to scratch out a living, who want
a better life for their children and for whom farming is a source of income and
not a very good income. Activists must focus on these issues, and therefore
frequently frame their discussions with farmers in terms of practical arguments
surrounding seed and input costs, yield sizes, and related concerns. However,
these arguments are open to debate, and proponents of GM crops can answer
them with studies that show lowered seed or input costs, or with the production
of new, better-performing GM varieties.
Similarly, arguments that GM crops make farmers dependent on foreign
agrochemical companies apply equally to hybrids, or indeed to any seeds and
other inputs purchased from MNCs. Gail Omvedt (1998) has argued that use of
Bt cotton is compatible with swadeshi farming, as farmers already rely on hybrid
seeds, and Mahyco is an Indian company with a long and reputable history.
Further, Indian governments, and Karnataka's government in particular, have
shown great enthusiasm for developing Indian biotechnology along a similar
path to information technology (Scoones 2007). There is therefore a reasonable
expectation that India will soon be developing its own GM crops. Effectively,
both the discourse of swadeshi and arguments that GM crops are too expensive
provide only a temporary and contingent basis for opposition.

Section two: there is no resistance without alternatives

There is a significant overlap between activism within the opposition to GM
crops which focuses on resistance to GM crops and activism promoting organic
and traditional agriculture. As MD Nanjundaswamy wrote, there is no sense in
dividing resistance and alternatives, since none of them can take place without
the other (1998, 157). However, this aspect of the movement has received

80

relatively little attention amongst scholars, perhaps because the activities it

carries out are less visible. As well as my own work in the area (Croeser 2007),
Scoones' study of anti-GM activism in India, Brazil and South Africa is a notable
exception in its recognition that, anti-GM activists have linked up with those
working on small-scale sustainable agriculture [as] a positive story is seen as
key, where the rhetoric of activists can become a reality on the ground (2005,
35). While the actions against GM crops have often been deliberately symbolic
and aimed at gaining media attention, much of the work for alternatives has
occurred at the grassroots level and has been far less dramatic. This work has
framed the debate around GM crops primarily within development or
ecofeminist perspectives. Despite the lack of scholarly attention to these
groups, the perspectives they espouse have gained a wider audience
internationally than those put forward by the KRRS and others working within
the swadeshi frame.
There is a wide range of data to support the claim that groups working on
sustainable agricultural development are part of the movement against GM
crops. As discussed in the first chapter, there are a number of problems with
attempts to exactly map and describe social movements, which have shifting
boundaries and fluid membership. It is nevertheless possible to show links
through self-identification with movement goals and with the movement as a
whole, participation in movement actions, and organisational links. For example,
during a survey of anti-GM activist organisations in Bangalore, Scoones found
that several organisations primarily addressing sustainable agriculture, seed
saving and biodiversity actively identified themselves as having an explicitly
anti-GM stance, including the Genetic Resource, Energy, Ecology, and Nutrition
(GREEN) Foundation, AME Foundation, Honey Bee Network and the Organic
Agriculture Network (2005, 21). These organisations also take part in movement
events, as in the case of an open letter written in 2008 to the chairman of the
National Biodiversity Authority in protest against his statements in favour of GM
crops. This letter was signed by the GREEN Foundation and Sahaja
Sumruddha (an umbrella organisation for sustainable agriculture practitioners),
as well as by a variety of related organisations based outside Karnataka.

81

Organisations promoting sustainable agriculture are deeply integrated with the

movement against GM crops.
There are a number of different groups involved in efforts to promote
sustainable agriculture. Vandana Shiva's high profile internationally means that
the group she founded, Navdanya, is relatively well-known. Navdanya, which
promotes domestic crop biodiversity through work with small farmers, is based
primarily in the north of India (Navdanya 2008). Gene Campaign, which also
works in the northern part of India, has also received some international
attention, in large part because of the work of Suman Sahai. In Karnataka, there
are a number of organisations and individuals promoting organic, sustainable,
or traditional agricultural techniques. The GREEN Foundation and ICRA are
both working with marginal farmers on these issues, while speakers such as
Subhash Palekar have been holding workshops for farmers in partnership with
the KRRS and other organisations.
These groups should be distinguished from the KRRS and other farmers'
movements. Navdanya, Gene Campaign and the GREEN Foundation more
closely fit the NGO model, with governing boards, formalised leadership
structures and role allocation, and clearly-defined activities. While it is difficult to
gauge the exact extent of participation in either farmers' movements or NGO
activities, the targeted projects carried out by Gene Campaign, GREEN
Foundation and Navdanya would seem to inherently limit the breadth of their
support base. GREEN Foundation works with 3245 farmers at last count
(GREEN Foundation 2008c) and Gene Campaign has several hundred
members, each working with local coalitions (Gene Campaign 2008). Navdanya
claims a significantly higher support base of 70,000 farming families (Navdanya
2008). Despite the undeniable influence of these organisations, their
involvement has often been primarily through specific developmental projects
and contributions to debate at the elite level (such as attempts to influence
government policy and statements to the media) rather than through expansive
mobilisation of opposition at the grassroots level.

82

Activities carried out by these groups fall into three broad categories. The first
category of work focuses on developing rural communities through a range of
projects, including providing training in traditional and organic agricultural
techniques and helping to establish seed banks and marketing systems for
village produce. The second category of work provides a research base for the
first category; groups document local crop varieties and how they are grown
and used, and research traditional agricultural techniques that may be falling
into disuse. Finally, each of these groups also engages in what is usually called
advocacy: promoting the importance of organic and traditional agriculture, and
of crop biodiversity. This advocacy is often aimed at a policy-making audience,
but is also directed at urban audiences at times. While those promoting
alternatives to GM crops occasionally take part in the large protests and direct
actions that have gained groups such as the KRRS and Greenpeace so much
attention, their work tends to be less visible.
The difference in activities carried out by those promoting organic agriculture
and those vocally opposing GM crops is strongly tied to the frames adopted by
each. While those discussed in this section employ some of the same frames as
the KRRS, their discourse tends to fit more easily within the language of
development and ecofeminism than Gandhian or global justice discourse.
Navdanya, Gene Campaign and GREEN Foundation all link ecological issues to
social justice concerns; while Navdanya highlights effects on and involvement of
women, Gene Campaign specifically targets adivasi communities 14 and the
GREEN Foundation focuses on landless and marginal farmers.
The development work done by these groups is frequently framed in terms of
food security. Promotion of local crop varieties is primarily justified in terms of
their high nutritional content and suitability for local conditions. For example,
GREEN Foundation's kitchen garden programme makes extensive use of local
legume and vegetable varieties. Kitchen gardens are seen by GREEN
Foundation as both a repository of diversity in vegetables, and as a means of
14

Adivasis are indigenous peoples who have historically been marginalised within India. Many
adivasi communities depend heavily on forest produce, and the process of colonisation and
enclosure of the forests that began formally with the 1864 Forest Act and was extended by
legislation in the post-colonial period left them with few formal rights over forest resources
(Bijoy 2003).

83

ensuring nutritional security (2009c). Preservation of crop biodiversity, similarly,

is seen as a way of ensuring a varied and nutritious diet for rural communities.
Seed banks are a way of not only preserving local crop varieties, but also
ensuring that farmers have access to seed. While this is conceived of as an
alternative to GM crops, and more generally to the purchase of commercial
seed, it is usually framed in such a way that food security is highlighted, rather
than a more confrontational anti-GM message.
The ecofeminism15 espoused by Shiva has gained more visibility in oppositional
communities, particularly within the GJM. Shiva is frequently called upon in both
activist and academic spaces to speak for the Global South 16, and her analysis
tightly interweaves a critique of the ecological effects of GM crops and other
commercial farming methods with discussion about their consequences for the
poor. Shiva also draws on other intellectual traditions, including Marxism and
post-colonial studies. Brass describes Shiva's position as one that advocates
human

rights

and

democratic

resistance,

endogeneity/difference/diversity/decentralisation,

and
while

celebrates
opposing

development/progress/class/modernity as unacceptable universal categories

associated exclusively with a western colonial Enlightenment project (1995b,
41). While Shiva uses a variety of different terms throughout her work, her
position remains consistently rooted in ecofeminist critiques of contemporary
capitalism.
Shiva's ecofeminist perspective associates Indian spirituality with a more caring
and nurturing approach to nature. For example, in one interview Shiva
connected Indian perspectives with those of American Indians, saying, Just like
Chief Seattle talked about being in the web of life, in India we talk about
vasudhaiva kutumbkam, which means the earth family. Indian cosmology has
never separated the human from the non-humanwe are a continuum (in Van
Gelder 2003). Throughout the Third World, Shiva argues, life is sacred (Shiva
15

16

Ecofeminism is a stream of political philosophy and activism that links the domination of
woman with the domination of nature. As with feminism and environmentalism more broadly,
there are a number of variations of ecofeminism thought and practice.
For example, in Genetically modified organisms in agriculture, a voluminous publication that
aims to provide an overview of the gamut of GMO issues (Nelson 2001, 4), Shiva's is the
sole perspective from the Global South, although there is another about the Global South.

84

2000, 98). GREEN Foundation and related groups use traditional rituals and
festivals in order to promote local crop varieties and agricultural techniques, and
see these rituals as embodying and reproducing traditional knowledge. GREEN
Foundation's website, for example, mentions the importance of technical,
social, and spiritual dimensions of traditional knowledge (GREEN Foundation
2009a). This willingness to reference and work within Hindu spirituality, as well
as to engage with spirituality in a more general sense, distinguishes many
groups within this section of the movement from the KRRS, which has been
criticised for its avoidance of religious symbolism (Assadi 1994, 214).
The projects that these groups are undertaking are important and meaningful,
especially for the communities which they work with. However, the inevitably
localised nature of the work makes it difficult to tell how significant its impact will
be on the landscape of Indian agriculture. Similarly, it remains to be seen
whether a significant proportion of farmers will make use of indigenous seeds in
preference to commercial seed. Seed banks certainly make a vital contribution
to the movement opposing GM crops, keeping alive the possibility of
alternatives to GM crops and the high-yielding seed varieties developed during
the Green Revolution. It is important to note that it is not only local seed
varieties that must be preserved, but also the body of agricultural knowledge
that accompanies them; which seeds should be planted under which conditions,
what different varieties are useful for, which seed to save, and how to preserve
seeds.
The major contributions made by these groups may be not so much in terms of
specific projects, but rather their contributions to the debate over the future of
Indian agriculture. One aspect of this has been their focus on seed sovereignty,
also adopted to a lesser extent by the KRRS and groups focusing on opposing
GM crops, and more generally the opposition to foreign ownership of Southern
biodiversity. This has been most clearly expressed through the development of
the concept of biopiracy.
During the 1990s, biopiracy remained a disputed concept. Even in 2000, a
report on the concept listed the industry viewpoint on biopiracy as being, the
85

unauthorized use, multiplication or copying of privately owned innovations that

are protected by patent or plant breeders' rights. The industry perspective was
that the application and enforcement of intellectual property rights is vital to
protect the rewards of innovation and hence encourage further research
(Crucible II Group 2000, 22). Activism around a number of key cases changed
that. In the wake of attempts to patent extracts from neem and turmeric, and to
patent a variety of Basmati rice, activists have managed to firmly redefine
biopiracy as the enclosure of (mostly) Southern biodiversity by (mostly)
Northern MNCs for commercial gain. There are varying degrees of critique of
the application of intellectual property laws to animal and plant life, ranging from
perspectives that see it as permissible, but skewed towards MNCs, to those
within the movement opposing GM crops who see any patent on life as
impermissible (Shiva 1997; Nanjundaswamy 1998a, 125). Neither the court
cases that have been rallying-cries for activists nor the arguments made have
focused on GM crops, but GM crops are frequently positioned as the extreme
form of the existing trend towards patenting and commercialisation of
indigenous plant varieties.
These claims have disrupted the increasing naturalisation of intellectual
property within international legal regimes, and have been instrumental in the
creation of laws protecting the rights of people in the South over their natural
biodiversity. As discussed in Chapter One, there is a significant body of work
that traces the development of intellectual property and explores the relatively
recent emergence of claims that authors, inventors, artists, and so on have a
natural right to have exclusive control over their work (Boyle 2008, 29 on). As
biotechnology has become an increasingly lucrative domain of research, and in
order to expand and cement the profitability of biotechnological research, claims
that link intellectual property with natural and unassailable rights have been
extended to cover research that deals directly with living organisms. The
incorporation of protections for these rights into international institutions such
as the WTO has further contributed to shaping a global discourse that
naturalises intellectual property rights over biotechnological research.

86

The struggle over biopiracy as a concept and a legal definition is tightly

interlinked with attempts to change the terms of the debate by gaining
acknowledgement and legitimacy for indigenous and traditional knowledge
systems. During the turmeric court case, those arguing that there were
examples of prior art had to deal with a legal system skewed against oral and
community-based knowledge (Shiva 2000). Activists throughout the Global
South, and their allies in the North, have worked to gain recognition for
grassroots knowledge, as Darrell Posey did in the case of the Declaration of
Belm (1988). They have also had to establish that intellectual property, insofar
as it exists, is something that can be possessed by communities, and held in
common, and that it is not just a source of revenue but also the lifeblood of
many communities.
Attempts to gain legitimacy for alternative ways of knowing have been
expressed in a number of other ways. One of these is the insistence on a more
holistic, networked, and contextualised model of scientific research. Shiva has
argued that GM technology is the result of an engineering paradigm which
offers technological fixes to complex problems, and by ignoring their
complexity, generates new ecological problems which are later defined away as
'unanticipated side effects' and 'negative externalities' (2001, 191). A concrete
example of this is the claim that Green Revolution crop varieties are superior to
indigenous varieties. Shiva (2000) argues that rather than evaluating crops
across only a single dimension (yield), they should be seen as part of an
interlinked system. Indigenous varieties, she argues, may produce less yield,
but also produce fodder for animals, or building materials. They may be more
drought-resistant, or require fewer expensive inputs. Often, they are grown with
a number of other crops, so that the soil fertility is maintained and a range of
nutrients are available. This focus on crops as part of a system, rather than
stand-alone components, is echoed in the work of GREEN Foundation (GREEN
Foundation 2008a) and Gene Campaign.
This more holistic and grounded science is usually explicitly associated with
traditional knowledge by its advocates. This trend is especially evident in the
case of groups that promote organic farming as an alternative to GM and Green
87

Revolution agriculture, although it is not limited to these groups. Somalingiah,

one of the oldest members of the KRRS, said that a key movement aim is to
translate the traditional Indian system into the modern age, emphasising the
links between traditional life and a holistic, ecological perspective: Our village
system is an ecological system (Somalingiah & Prasad 2006, pers. comm., Feb
23). Shiva highlights the interconnectedness of indigenous agriculture, for
example, cropping systems include a symbiotic relationship between soil, water,
farm animals and plants (1991, 69). In each of these examples, traditional
knowledge and practices are not conceived of as opposed to science, but rather
as a more rooted, holistic, and effective form of science.
Other attempts to change the terms of the debate by redefining science have
worked within the dominant scientific paradigm, but have claimed the higher
ground by arguing that pro-GM studies are biased by commercial interests.
Activists argue that the current institutional environment is not conducive to
unbiased evaluations of GM technology. In large part, this is seen as a result of
the disproportionate involvement of the private sector in biotechnology, as
compared to the larger role played by the public sector during the first Green
Revolution. Divya Raghunandan sees the Indian Council of Agricultural
Research, the apex body for agricultural research in India, as facing a huge
crisis not only in terms of funding, but also in terms of decision-making about
the future direction for research. Under these circumstances, GM technology is
being offered up as a solution, and with it massive funding and advantageous
public-private partnerships (2006, pers. comm., Feb 7). Activists' perceptions of
pro-GM bias within the Indian public agricultural research sector were further
evidenced by numerous references to an academic at the University of
Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore, who was supporting this [movement] from
the back side (Bhat 2006, pers. comm., Feb 28), as he was worried that direct
criticism of GM crops would lead to him losing his job (Babu 2006, pers. comm.,
Feb 22; Bhat 2006, pers. comm., Feb 28). For many activists, researchers in
both the public and private sectors have little basis for claims to scientific
objectivity and neutrality.

88

These critiques of bias within the current research environment do not remain
within the movement; they are frequently voiced, and have reached audiences
within governments and academia, affecting the research environment
internationally, if not within India. Disrupting the dominant discourse is also
important within Indian rural communities, and activists have attempted on
numerous occasions to counter what they see as misinformation put out by
agricultural companies. A large part of Greenpeace India's work on the GM
issue has focused on countering aggressive and unethical marketing of GM
seeds to farmers, which frequently make assurances of increased yields
(Raghunandan 2006 pers. comm., Feb 22; Greenpeace & CSA 2005).
Greenpeace India researched these claims, and another NGO then placed this
research in the form that the initial advertisements had taken in order to reach
farmers (Raghunandan 2006, pers. comm., Feb 22). Given the intense
marketing of GM cotton this is an important part of the movement's work.
Participants within the movement offer up their own studies, implicitly or
explicitly claiming that these are scientifically purer, unbiased by the self-serving
motives of Monsanto and other MNCs. For example, Greenpeace India, working
with NGOs from several other cotton-growing states, set up the Monitoring and
Evaluation Committee in order to study the use of Bt cotton in the field.
Greenpeace India also provided GEAC with briefing papers on high-protein
varieties of Indian potatoes in 2002, filling in the gaps that they felt were left by
pro-GM research in the approvals process for GM potatoes (Raghunandan
2006, pers. comm., Feb 22). So far, those within the movement seem to have
had some success in undermining claims to neutrality by supporters of GM
crops, but have had limited success in gaining legitimacy for their own position.
There is a widespread sense that both sides have exaggerated, if not lied, and
that non-partisan views are difficult to come by (Scoones 2005; Stone 2002).

Section three: complexities and contradictions

There are unintended consequences to all actions. While the Indian movement
opposing GM crops (including those sections providing alternatives) has
managed to bring significant attention to bear on the GM issue, it seems likely
89

that they have lost the battle when it comes to GM crops. This is partly a result
of the regulatory and policy-making environment surrounding GM crops. On the
face of it, India's federal system provides substantial regulation of GM crops at
the national level. The first main instrument within the national framework
regulating GM crops is the Environment Protection Act 1986. Amendments to
the Environment Protection Act made in 1989, the Rules for the Manufacture,
Use, Import, Export and Storage of Hazardous Micro Organisms, Genetically
Engineered Organisms or Cells 1986 (or Rules), set up a framework for
regulating possible environmental pollutants, and gave the main responsibility
for implementation to India's Ministry of Environment and Forests. The
Department of Biotechnology also has a mandate to Evolve Bio Safety
Guidelines, and situates its work within the context of the Environment
Protection Act (Department of Biotechnology). The Rules set up a number of
regulatory bodies, including the previously-mentioned GEAC, whose roles
include reviewing developments in biotechnology, enforcing biosafety, and
investigating and taking punitive action in case of violations of statutory
provisions. In addition to the 1989 modifications to India's Environment
Protection Act, the Seed Policy 2002 contains a section (Section 6) explicitly
addressing GM crops. This section states that, [a]ll genetically engineered
crops/varieties will be tested for environment and bio-safety before their
commercial release, as per the regulations and guidelines of the Environment
Protection Act (EPA), 1986. This provision was reinforced in Section 15(1) of
the draft Seeds Bill 2004. Taken together, this legislation provides what is,
potentially, a rigorous structure for the approval, review, and containment of GM
crops.
In reality, however, both the national implementation of legislation and state
policy regarding GM crops have been disappointing for anti-GM activists. While
it is possible for existing national legislation to provide mechanisms for a
rigorous approach to the review of GM crops, the political will to do so has not
materialised. This can, in part, be explained by the focus on biotechnology as
an area of development for India's new economy. This focus is exemplified by
the Department of Biotechnology's website, which describes the Department's
mandate being to: Promote large scale use of Biotechnology, Support R&D
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and manufacturing in Biology, and Promote University and Industry

Interaction, as well as the brief mention of biosafety. This focus has also been
replicated at the state level. While some states have at least temporarily banned
Bt cotton, the focus on biotechnology as an area of development has been
echoed in state-level policies, particularly in Karnataka. This has been
highlighted by the government of Karnataka's increasing support for
biotechnology since 1999, which has resulted in plans for Bangalore Helix, a
biotech business cluster, Bangalore Bio, an annual national event that began in
2001, and an increasing number of biotechnology degrees offered at state
tertiary institutions (Scoones 2003; Scoones 2007; Bangalore Bio 2009; The
Hindu 2008). Despite the possibilities offered by existing legislation, the overall
policy framework has not been conducive to activists' attempts to restrict the
entry and spread of GM crops into India.
There is a consensus within sections of the Indian state and national
governments, as well as within at least some agricultural communities, that any
attempts to regulate the spread of GM crops are likely to fail, and may be
ultimately undesirable. This has been demonstrated most clearly in the case of
unauthorised sowings of Bt cotton in Gujarat which, as noted above, were not
burnt once discovered. In part, this was because of pressure on the government
by farmers. Gujarat's Minister of Agriculture argued that if farmers wanted the
technology, it must be the pesticide lobby that was opposed to Bt cotton, while
the consensus within state and national governments, and eventually GEAC,
was that farmers' interests should not be harmed by preventing access to Bt
cotton (Herring 2008, 133). Activists' assessments are that the reality has been
that, theres no political will to regulate, and its incapable, the government is
completely incapable of regulating crops (Raghunandan 2006, pers. comm.,
Feb 7). Stone's ethnographic accounts of farmers' decisions about seeds in
Warangal, Andhra Pradesh, confirm that farmers were concerned about the
quality of illegal seeds, but had no concerns about legal issues (2007a). Even
given the political will to enforce what would be an unpopular decision, it seems
doubtful that the Indian government would have the resources necessary to
prevent the spread of unauthorised GM crops, or recall GM crops that had been
previously authorised.
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Faced with strong governmental support for biotechnology, the movement

seems not to have established a basis for widespread opposition among
farmers themselves. Research by Scoones suggests that there are occasional
channels open for changing policy on biotechnology by mobilising rural
constituencies around elections. However, anti-GM activists, and the KRRS in
particular, have not managed to mobilise the numbers necessary to gain
leverage through these channels. In fact, Scoones argues that farmers most
likely to be part of the KRRS are also those most likely to experiment with Bt
cotton (2003, 23-24). It is possible that this partly explains the inability to gain
significant policy changes on GM crops. Additionally, it is possible that some of
the more successful frames of opposition leave open significant space for
adoption of GM crops.
Ecofeminist perspectives which configure genetic engineering as an affront to
the sanctity of life leave no room for the adoption of GM crops, as they provide
an inherent objection to GMOs. While it is difficult to gauge exactly the extent to
which ecofeminism has gained a foothold in India, there are several reasons for
considering its influence to be limited. Firstly, although several large farmers'
movements have mobilised a discourse with some similarities to ecofeminism,
radical outcomes of this discourse have often been contained and limited by
their articulation within the framework of Hindu nationalism. For example,
although Sharad Joshi has explicitly aligned Shetkari Sanghatana with
women's power, this is done without critiquing naturalized social roles and
hierarchies of the traditional patriarchal Hindu family (Roy & Borowiak 2003,
70). Secondly, to the extent that ecofeminist discourse is picked up by farmers'
movements, it seems to be maintained only while useful. Sharad Joshi's
alignment of Shetkari Sanghatana with women's power did not prove a barrier
to the movements' adoption of a pro-GM stance. Organisations such as
Navdanya and GREEN Foundation have a firmer commitment to ecofeminist
principles, but in comparison to farmers' movements their support base is
limited, as is their political power. While ecofeminism has been a significant
theme within the anti-GM movement in India, the Gandhian idea of swadeshi

92

and opposition to neoliberal globalisation remain the backbone of the

movement.
These frames do not provide a basis for inherent opposition to all GM crops.
Even some of those within the movement, for example, talk about their
opposition to GM crops not in terms of a fundamental disagreement with the
use of GM technology, but rather in terms of the need for an Indian-controlled
seed industry. One journalist involved in reporting on GM issues who spoke at
the 2006 South Against Genetic Engineering conference, Harishchandra Bhat,
said of Bt cotton seeds, [w]hy should you depend on what Monsanto
produces? ... Instead we need to have our own [biotechnology] (Bhat 2006,
pers. comm., Feb 28). Those who take this position frequently emphasise the
need for Indian universities to take the lead in developing new seed varieties,
including GM seeds. This is often positioned within a sovereignty discourse, as
a matter of India having control over vital aspects of its economy. The lack of
visibility of this perspective within the movement can perhaps be attributed more
to its distastefulness to movement leaders than to it being a position held by few
movement participants, although this is hard to gauge without more extensive
research in the field.
The most stunning example of the flexibility of swadeshi discourse, and the
associated Bharat/India distinction, in relation to GM crops was seen in the
actions of Shetkari Sanghatana, the farmers' movement led by Sharad Joshi. As
noted above, massive illegal plantings of Bt cotton were discovered in Gujarat in
2001. When the national government ordered that the plants be uprooted and
burnt, Shetkari Sanghatana held a large rally and Joshi declared that, They will
have to walk over our corpses to destroy this crop. This is our satyagraha
(Joshi in Herring 2004, 212). Even once the government promised to pay for
crops before they were burnt, Shetkari Sanghatana continued to oppose the
move, positioning it as a matter of urban bias: [d]evelopment should not be
locked up in the cities. The marvel of technology should reach the villages,
declared Joshi (in Herring 2004, 212). The KRRS and other anti-GM groups
contested these claims, but Joshi's claims were nonetheless effective and had a
resonance that is clear from the spread of pro-Bt protests to other states
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(Herring 2004, 212). Other farmers' groups, such as Khedut Samaj from
Gujarat, have also begun calling for the legalisation of black market, Indianbred, Bt seeds (Herring 2008, 140). The ease with which swadeshi discourse
incorporates calls for Indian-produced GM crops has already become
problematic for the movement opposing GM crops, and may become more so in
the future.
While the cotton plantings that Shetkari Sanghatana were defending were, it
seems, not known to be GM cotton when they were planted, since 2001 there
has been widespread and deliberate pirating of Bt cotton. It is difficult to gauge
the exact extent of adoption of pirated cotton, but information obtained by
Herring in 2005 indicated that at the time 34 per cent of all cotton seeds sold in
India were transgenic, and of these approximately 73 per cent are pirated, or
stealth, seeds. Herring notes that these figures only include packaged and
branded seeds. If loose seeds are included, the figures may be much higher
(2008, 135). These pirated and packaged cotton seeds are often linked to
legitimate Bt varieties by names such as BesT cotton (Herring 2008, 134).
Adoption of GM cotton is not a one-way process; some years there will be
adoption amongst almost all farmers in an area, while in other years GM cotton
will be dropped (Stone 2007). All of the evidence seems to be that farmers
pirating seed are doing so for pragmatic reasons, and that they see GM cotton
as part of the same continuum as non-GM hybrids; GM seeds are subject to the
same cost-benefit analyses as other seeds.
In some cases, it might be possible to attribute this attitude to a lack of
information about GM crops. At least among some farmers, understanding
about what is involved in GM technology seems limited. One group of farmers
from near Darwhad, around 430 kilometres North of Bangalore, who had a long
history of involvement with the KRRS knew about Bt cotton, although it is not
commonly used in the area. However, they consistently referred to it as a
hybrid rather than as transgenic, even upon further questioning about GM
varieties. These farmers have not only worked with the KRRS, but also watch
television and listen to the radio, and familiarise themselves with government
policies (Tippanna 2006, pers. comm., Feb 15). Stone's research in the
94

Warangal district of Andhra Pradesh confirms that farmers treat GM crops as

simply another, albeit more highly regulated, hybrid variety (2007a). This
suggests that their particular status as transgenic is either not fully understood
or is considered to be of minimal importance. So far little research has been
done into the extent to which farmers understand the difference between GM
and non-GM hybrids, and make their choices according to this information. This
research would be an important and valuable contribution to the field, especially
when discussing the effectiveness of grassroots knowledge as it applies to this
issue.
The pirating of Bt cotton has become a controversial issue in the debate over
GM crops. As Herring (2008) notes, it disrupts claims by opponents of GM crops
that farmers know best. If farmers' holistic, grounded, grassroots agricultural
practices lead to widespread adoption of Bt cotton, it creates a serious problem
for claims that grassroots knowledge should be preferred over MonsantoKheti, as Shiva calls the science of genetic engineering (Van Gelder 2003). It
also further destabilises the already-precarious legitimacy of movement leaders'
speaking position; arguments that leaders are not in touch with farmers, and
that they do not understand farmers' needs and preferences, are further
strengthened by farmers' willingness to adopt GM crops.
This piracy has been pointed to by some, most notably Ronald Herring, as an
example of farmers subverting attempts by Mahyco-Monsanto to extract
monopoly rents in the form of patent charges. As noted above, the cost of legal
Bt cotton seeds is very high. However, this is not solely guaranteed by patent
protection. Mahyco-Monsanto is able to charge these prices because they are
the only supplier of Bt seeds that have gone through GEAC's accreditation
process. Pirated Bt seeds (which have not undergone environmental field trials)
cost considerably less: they were selling for Rs 250-700 per packet in Gujarat in
2005, while second-generation Bt seed packets were selling for as low as Rs 10
per packet (Herring 2008, 135). Farmers' use of black market Bt cotton allows
them to gain the benefits of Bt without paying high prices. It often means using,
or even reviving, seed-saving and breeding skills, as at times Bt seeds have
been in short supply (especially in 2001, after the banning of Navbharat)
95

(Herring 2008, 134). There are some signs that seed piracy is getting farmers
more involved in the process of breeding seeds (Stone 2007a, 87), regaining
control over seeds from large MNCs.
On the other hand, there is evidence that suggests that this optimistic reading of
the situation is not entirely justified. Research in a different part of India, Andhra
Pradesh, suggests that the widespread adoption of pirated Bt cotton is not
necessarily the outcome of farmers' application of a practical cost-benefit
analysis, and is not associated with increased control over seed. A study carried
out by Stone (2007a) suggests that at least in some areas, mass adoption of
particular cotton varieties (including Bt varieties) is based on very little real
evidence, and cotton farmers have lost many skills associated with the choice
and conservation of seeds. In Andhra Pradesh, Stone has found, farmers adopt
Bt cotton because of advertising, or because influential farmers have adopted it.
They often do not know key characteristics of the varieties that they plant (such
as boll size), and do not engage in experimentation with seeds, preferring novel
varieties to those that are tried and tested. Stone sees this as largely an
outcome of an uncertain seed market, in which seed quality may vary widely
and reliable information is hard to come by. Bt cotton is not the cause of
deskilling, argues Stone, but it is likely to exacerbate the problem as variations
in its performance across brands contribute to the general uncertainty over the
performance of different seeds (2007a, 85). While it is possible that in some
areas Bt cotton, and specifically the illegality of unregistered varieties, will
contribute to a greater involvement of farmers in seed saving and breeding,
Stone's research makes it clear that this is unlikely to be the case in all areas.
Further, as more varieties of GM cotton (and other crops) undergo the GEAC
registration process, the incentive to save and breed seed under the radar is
likely to diminish.
Nevertheless, the debate sparked by piracy of Bt cotton and the arguments put
forward by those opposing GM crops in India may prove important in coming
years. The genie is out of the bottle in terms of the adoption of GM crops in
India, but the role of farmers, NGOs, and other movement participants in the
decision-making process about agricultural development is far from settled. The
96

movement opposing GM crops has managed to bring significant attention to

bear on the issues surrounding GM crops, including their environmental impacts
and questions of how they will affect Indian farmers' access to seeds. While
some of the consequences of the movement's activities have been far from
what participants would have hoped, it is nevertheless the case that a range of
questions are being asked and approaches considered that might otherwise
have fallen by the wayside. Each of these forefronts different aspects of the
struggle over knowledge.
The first way in which the movement has forefronted struggles over knowledge
is through attempts to change the terms of the debate by questioning both the
neutrality of the scientific studies used by proponents of GMOs, and the model
of science itself. As noted previously, anti-GM activists have repeatedly
criticised the methodology and interpretation of Bt cotton trials, as well as trials
of other GM crops. Greenpeace India has not only produced analysis of other
studies, but has also produced competing studies (Scoones 2005, 33-34;
Raghunandan 2006, pers. comm., Feb 7). In addition to this, activists have
introduced, or emphasised, alternative frameworks for analysing the success or
failure of agricultural systems. Where agricultural companies emphasise the
potential profitability of GM crops, particularly in the case of GM cotton, activists
have attempted to define a successful agricultural system in terms of one or
more of the following: village and/or national sovereignty, food sovereignty,
preservation

of

crop

biodiversity,

environmental

sustainability,

and/or

preservation of cultural traditions. Doing so has frequently involved putting

forward an alternative vision of science, as Shiva does when she calls for Sitakheti [] a woman centred nature centred agriculture (1998). These
critiques are valuable from a scientific viewpoint, as they lead to close
examinations of methodology, the interpretation of results, and the generation of
hypotheses.
Perhaps more importantly in terms of the movement's work, however, they
reframe the debate in ways which lever open a space for increased input from
farmers, women, agricultural labourers, activists, and other groups that may
currently be excluded. In critiquing the bias of corporate studies of GM crops,
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activists destabilise assumptions that large-scale, well-funded tests are

necessarily more legitimate and authoritative than those produced by NGOs on
small budgets. This case study reinforces the argument made in Chapter One:
in highlighting links between public research and the corporate sector, Indian
activists question the assumption that political and economic power have no
influence over academic research, refusing any claim that scientists know best
and can make neutral evaluations for the good of all. Activists argue that
farmers (and by extension activists) must therefore be part of the decisionmaking process. Finally, calls for a paradigm of scientific research that sees
agricultural systems as systems must, by necessity, place those who make their
living through agriculture firmly in the picture as decision-makers, researchers
and experimenters rather than as the passive recipients of agricultural
technology.
Secondly, activists have disrupted the dominant discourse by refusing attempts
to naturalise the application of intellectual property law to biodiversity. In part,
this has been through the overlap between the anti-GM movement and activists
taking part in specific battles, as in the case of neem, turmeric, and basmati. On
a deeper level, however, activists in the Indian anti-GM movement have worked
to frame the global understanding of intellectual property. Perhaps the largest
contribution here has been the effective framing of the patenting of life as
biopiracy, flying in the face of attempts to configure it as merely the newest
Information Age growth industry. The work of Indian activists in opposing the
patenting of life has also been instrumental in the creation of a global discourse
that runs counter to the neoliberal narrative of intellectual property. This counterdiscourse sees communities, rather than corporations, as the subjects. The
object is not biotechnology, but rather biodiversity. The verb is not to own, but
to care for. This counter-discourse has not necessarily triumphed, but it has
had an influence on debates throughout the world and on international
institutions, including the Convention on Biological Diversity.
Thirdly, activists within the anti-GM movement in India have built their
arguments on the foundation of a strong claim for the free flow of information.
There are two aspects of this. Firstly, if we see seeds as vessels for the
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transferral and reproduction of genetic information, a definition which many

activists may no doubt find overly reductive, arguments for seeds to remain
beyond the purview of intellectual property law are arguments for the ability to
share (and remix) genetic information. Secondly, activists have repeatedly
called for research into GM technology to be carried out in a more open and
accessible way. Greenpeace India have attempted to open the debate on the
whole morality issue of how information needs to be out in the public domain,
both for farmers and for consumers, and have made extensive use of India's
Right to Information Act as part of their campaigns (Raghunandan 2006, pers.
comm. Feb 7). In pursuing their struggle, Indian activists have repeatedly
argued that knowledge needs to remain accessible, especially for marginalised
communities.
Each of these aspects of the struggle over knowledge is at the same time an
expression of the movement's claims, and a strategy for bolstering the
movement's position. They have implications for the kinds of argument that the
movement can make, and for the shape of the movement itself. For example, in
claiming a space for farmers' knowledge as potentially less biased than that
provided by corporate research, activists are simultaneously making an
argument about GM crops and reinforcing their own reliance on links with the
grassroots for legitimacy. This link may also give activists, observers, and critics
reason to approach the movement's arguments with some caution, and to ask
about the extent to which arguments for a new kind of science or the open flow
of information are based on activists' desires to strengthen their own position.
Herring (2006) has argued that activists' framing of science, and of the potential
risks of GM crops, has far more to do with attempts to build broad coalitions and
gain support than with the real interests of farmers. This is by no means the
only reading of the situation, and my research provided numerous examples of
committed and informed activists who have firm grassroots support.
Nevertheless, the use of arguments that centre on how knowledge should be
defined and disseminated can cut both ways, opening the movement up to
criticism as well as creating new spaces for activists' voices to be heard.

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Conclusion
The changes wrought by GM crops in India are yet to be seen. If critics of
GMOs are right, the massive release of GM crops into the Indian agricultural
system and natural environment should be cause for considerable concern.
While it is still conceivable that this release is reversible, it is incredibly unlikely,
given the scale of GM crops' adoption and the lack of resources and political
willingness the Indian government has to deal with the issue. This is not to say
that the work of the movement is over. Participants still see value in preventing
the entry of new GM crops into India, and in holding the government to account
in terms of their adherence to biosafety procedures (or lack thereof). The
movement against GM crops has managed, in concert with other movements
worldwide, to maintain critiques of genetic engineering and prevent it from
becoming a stable and widely-accepted technology. They have simultaneously
argued against claims that GM crops are technically better, and have argued for
the inclusion of non-technical issues in the debate.
Hope for anti-GM activists may also come in the form of a higher visibility for the
debate over GM crops. Research by Stone (2007), Jewitt (2000), and Gupta
and Chandak (2005) has indicated that farmers' agricultural knowledge is
spotty. In some areas, responses to Bt cotton have been marked by a context of
considerable deskilling (Stone 2007), while in others farmers have made use of
plant-breeding skills to derive significant gains from Bt cotton (Gupta & Chandak
2005). The debate over Bt cotton, and by extension GM crops more generally,
has gained significant coverage in a range of media, including radio and the
agricultural press. It has also stimulated more research and activism related to
farmers' agricultural knowledge. One possible outcome of the attention to these
issues may be increasing recognition among policy-makers and academics of
the importance of farmers' agricultural expertise. Another may be a growing
awareness of possible risks of GM crops among farmers. Whatever the
outcome of the debate over farmers' agricultural knowledge and how this
relates to use of GM crops, it is notable that the debate is taking place at all.
That even proponents of GM crops have attempted to legitimise their position
by pointing to farmers' use of Bt cotton (and pirating of Bt cotton) may even be

100

seen as a promising sign, insofar as it places a premium on farmers' knowledge

and experience.
As well as contributing to the debate within India over GM crops, activists within
this movement have been part of a global struggle to redefine how knowledge is
produced, who owns knowledge, and who should have access to it. While this
case study has focused on the local context of Indian activism, and particularly
on the southern state of Karnataka, it is important to remember that activists
have both drawn on and contributed to global discourse about intellectual
property, biotechnology, and what should constitute legitimate knowledge. At
times this has been overt, as was the case when activists protested against
provisions for patents on life in TRIPS. At other times activists' contributions
have been less visible: when activists' critique the bias of corporate research
and lever open a space for their own contributions to the debate, this space is
also opened for other marginalised groups around the world.
The movement therefore contributes to the broader project of globalisation in
two ways: through direct links with the global justice movement, which will be
discussed in more detail in the fourth chapter, and through activists'
participation in local, national, and global debates over knowledge. The latter
has taken three main forms. Firstly, in undermining the legitimacy of corporate
and academic research, Indian activists have contributed to attempts underway
throughout the world to establish grassroots actors as legitimate producers of
knowledge. Activists have also strengthened the position of others working
towards globalisation-from-below by arguing for a more holistic scientific
paradigm, one which is rooted in local realities and therefore places value on
the knowledge and experience of grassroots actors. Secondly, activists have
contributed to the global movement by refusing the naturalisation of the
neoliberal approach to intellectual property, in this case the claim that genes
can be owned. Given the opposition to the enclosure of the commons that is a
recurring theme within the global justice movement, this is a significant
contribution to the global struggle to retain spaces outside the reach of
corporate control. Thirdly, activists have reiterated the importance of the free
flow of information, be it research data or the genetic information encoded in
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seeds. Activists within the global justice movement have a particular interest in
information remaining free, as they do not have the resources to pay for access
to information. They also rely on the ability to disseminate their messages
widely and effectively. The movement discussed in this chapter may be firmly
rooted in India, but its contributions spread beyond India's borders, feeding into
the wider struggle for globalisation-from-below.
These contributions have links and echoes with struggles throughout the world.
The most obvious analogues are in the struggles underway in other parts of the
Global South, such as those discussed by Scoones (2005) in his comparison of
anti-GM struggles in India, Brazil and South Africa. However, there are also
movements emerging from more surprising quarters that address many of the
same issues as those discussed here. As we will see in the next chapter,
activism is now emerging around information technology, rather than
biotechnology, that draws on many of the same themes as the anti-GM struggle
in India. This activism is similarly opposed to corporate domination, to claims
that only elites can produce legitimate knowledge, to monocultures, and to
barriers to the free flow of information.

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Chapter Three
The digital liberties movement: the digital is political

Introduction
This chapter discusses the digital liberties movement (DLM), which is
attempting to highlight the political dimensions of decisions about digital
technologies and how they are used. As is the case with the previous case
study, this struggle is about particular technologies and issues, but it is also in a
broader sense about knowledge: who has a right to access knowledge, and
whose knowledge is recognised as legitimate. For a number of reasons,
including the relatively recent emergence of the movement and the differences
between it and more traditional social movements, it has received little attention
within mainstream social movement scholarship. Much of this chapter therefore
focuses on providing a comprehensive outline of the movement's history, goals,
analysis, tactics, and participants. In doing so, it will also be necessary to
address some of the conceptual issues that are involved in studying the
movement, including a discussion of virtual and offline spaces, emphasising
the close relationship between the two and the material effects of choices and
actions taken online.
The first section of this chapter provides a brief outline of the DLM, outlining the
argument for considering it a coherent movement. This argument draws on
social movement scholars' work in order to map the DLM, focusing on
participants' emerging collective identity and the movement's network structure.
This section gives a framework for returning to an exploration of the context
from which the DLM has emerged, which is necessary for a deeper
understanding of the issues that the DLM is addressing and the communities
which it is built from.
The second section of this chapter discusses the context of the DLM's
emergence. Revisiting and extending arguments from Chapter One, it examines
the extent and nature of technological change that has been associated with the
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revolution in ICTs. The path of technological development has been dependent

on historical, geographical, and political factors, including US technological and
political predominance. Its future also remains open to the influence of a variety
of actors, including elites and those striving to achieve globalisation from below.
We are now at a critical point in the development of the networked era. Various
elites, including governments (particularly the US government) and entrenched
industries, are attempting to gain tighter control over the spaces opened up by
ICTs and the uses to which they are put. In some cases, these attempts have
relied on deploying technological or legal measures of control. However, in the
case of certain kinds of knowledge, there has been a largely successful attempt,
led by corporate interests and supported by many governments in the Global
North, to fundamentally rewrite the political framework used to determine who
should have access to and ownership over certain information. The
naturalisation and extension of IP law has severely curtailed the freedom to
access and disseminate a wide range of cultural content. Together, these
developments have led to significant restrictions on the freedom that is
potentially afforded by the ICT revolution.
The third section returns to the development of the DLM, tracing both its history
and its current incarnation. While the DLM takes some inspiration from
movements that have more traditionally fallen under the purview of social
movement scholars, its roots are in communities and subcultures that are
largely based online. These roots have shaped the DLM, feeding into and
overlapping with it. They have contributed ideas, participants, and tactics. The
emergence of the DLM has resulted both from the evolution of these
movements, and from the reaction to trends discussed in the second section.
While the DLM is still in its infancy, a number of battles have served as rallyingpoints, bringing attention to the movement's claims and helping to forge the
networks that sustain it. Out of these battles, and the everyday communications
that all movements rely upon, the DLM is slowly building into a recognisable
movement.

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Section one: defining the digital liberties movement

The DLM has emerged partly in response to elite attempts to (re)gain control of
ICTs, and partly through merges of and changes within communities that have
existed for decades, including the F/LOSS movement, the hacker community,
and the yippies, that use, tinker, and develop ICTs. This background will be
further explored in the following sections. This section provides a brief outline of
the DLM and the grounds for considering it a coherent movement in order to
situate the discussion that follows.
As I pointed out in the first chapter, it can be difficult to exactly define what
constitutes a social movement, and even more difficult to draw the boundaries
around a particular social movement. This problem becomes more acute in the
case of movements which have not yet received significant attention in the
media or within academia, as even their existence is nebulous, and may be
disputed. It should be noted that the characteristics and boundaries of the DLM
as they are described here remain fluid. While it is undeniable that a movement
is emerging, one could easily posit its locus and membership differently.
There are a number of organisations and individuals which form the core of the
movement, and in each case one could dispute whether digital liberties are
really the focus of their activism. Cory Doctorow has been involved in activism
around these issues for a number of years now, and is one of the authors of a
group blog, BoingBoing, that regularly addresses copyright, civil liberties, online
surveillance, and other matters at the heart of the movement's work. Lawrence
Lessig has also played an important role through his academic work and
advocacy. As well as being involved in key court cases relating to US copyright
law, Lessig's The Future of Ideas (2001) and Free Culture (2004) have proved
highly influential within the movement, and Lessig has been involved in setting
up FreeCulture.org, which has a number of student chapters around the world.
Yochai Benkler, Lawrence Liang, Wendy Seltzer and Jessica Litman are some
of the other visible activists in the field, many of them working within academia
and the legal profession. There are, as in any other social movement,
thousands of unsung movement participants whose activities remain largely
unseen. Organisations involved in the movement include the EFF, Public

105

Knowledge, Piratbyrn17, Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII),

the Free Software Foundation (FSF), and many others. Some of these actors
position themselves as involved in IP research and activism, others in civil rights
advocacy or other areas.
It is possible to see these actors as involved in other movements, and indeed to
see the DLM not as one movement but rather as several overlapping
movements. This is, however, not an conceptual problem limited to the DLM. As
I argued in the first chapter, social movements are inherently multifaceted, fluid,
and messy. Even those as well-established as the feminist movement or the
environmentalist movement can be seen as a kaleidoscope of other
movements, with participants flowing in and out of various overlapping
movements. The DLM has been influenced by ideas, and is composed of
activists, from the F/LOSS movement, the creative commons movement, the
anti-copyright movement, civil liberties movements, appropriate technology
movements, opposition to software patents, and hacker culture, among others.
Yet at the same time there is significant evidence that it is more than simply the
sum of these parts.
One justification for considering the DLM to be a single movement is that ideas,
activists, and frames, are increasingly cohering to tie together issues as wideranging as online civil liberties, F/LOSS, digital rights management (DRM), and
intellectual property rights (IPR). At first glance, it is difficult to see the
connection between these issues, and in many cases their political dimensions
are unclear. Establishing that there is a connection, and framing these issues as
political, constitutes a large part of the movement's work. The frame that ties the
DLM together, and which we will discuss in more detail below, is the attempt to
build an understanding that citizens/users (rather than corporations or
governments) should control ICTs and online spaces, tying this control to
democratic principles and ideals of personal freedom. In coming years, it is
likely that this work will not only gain more visibility, but will help activists to gain
a more durable and cohesive sense of their place in the struggle which they are
engaged in.
17

The Piratbyrn disbanded in June 2010, stating that this was partly because they felt their
work was done and partially because of the death of one of the founding members (BBC
News 2010).

106

As noted in the Introduction, a social movement is defined as a sustained,

organized public effort making collective claims on target authorities that uses
a particular repertoire of tactics on behalf of a group of people that claim to be
worthy, united, numerous, and committed (Tilly 2004, 3-4). In addition to this,
some scholars have argued for the importance of network structures (della
Porta & Diani 1999, 159) and collective identity (della Porta & Diani 1999, 24)
as defining features of social movements. This provides a useful starting point
from which to examine the emergence of the DLM and sketch its defining
characteristics.
Currently, the requirement for a collective identity and a proclamation of unity
outlined in Tarrow's definition of a social movement is perhaps the most
problematic aspect of my claim that a movement has emerged around digital
liberties. There are a number of terms currently in use by media, scholars, and
participants

themselves

to

identify

movement

participants,

including

infoanarchists, online civil libertarians (Schwartz & Cha 2000; Borland 2001),
pirates (Engstrm 2007, pers. comm., July 27), (anti-)intellectual property
activists (Brown 2005) and copyfighters (Farivar 2008). However, each of
these terms tends to address only a single aspect of the movement's work, and
none has yet gained wide currency. No single term is used to describe either
the movement or participants. I have adopted the label digital liberties
because it encapsulates both the grounds of battle (including hardware,
software, and online spaces) and the general disposition of the movement
(which highly values individual autonomy, and is inclined towards libertarian
principles), both of which will be discussed in more depth below. While a fullyfledged collective identity has not yet been developed by movement
participants, adoption of the above-mentioned terms by activists do point
towards a nascent sense of collective identity.
Similarly, the network structure of the movement is still developing, and
communication and dialogue between different actors within the movement are
growing. There are several organisations that form nodes in this nascent
network structure. One of the most important of these is the EFF, which was
founded in 1990 and fights for our freedoms in the networked world (EFF
107

2008). Public Knowledge, also based in the US, is a Washington, D.C.-based

public interest group working to defend citizens' rights in the emerging digital
culture (Public Knowledge 2008). In Europe, key organisations include the FFII
and the Piratbyrn, or Piracy Bureau, a Swedish organisation engaged in
reflection over questions regarding copying, information infrastructure and
digital culture (Piratbyrn 2007). Given the DLM's deep roots in online spaces,
mapping the links between organisations' websites provides at least a rough
indication of the emerging network structure. The cluster map shown on the
following page was built using a tool called Issue Crawler, which tracks and
displays links between websites.

108

Cluster map illustrating the DLM, Issue Crawler

These links could represent either organisational ties (links to organisations
involved in a coalition or campaign) or common interests (links to articles or
other content on related issues). Grey arrows represent links; an arrow from
one site to another shows that the former linked to the latter. While the nodes of
this map have intentionally been limited for the purposes of clarity, it is
illustrative of the links between organisations active around different issues
within the DLM. For example, there are strong links between Free Press
(freepress.net, active on media reform) and The Berkman Centre for Internet
109

and Society (cyber.law.harvard.edu, which assesses the role of law in regulating

cyberspace). F/LOSS organisations, including the Free Software Foundation
(fsf.org) and the GNU18 project (gnu.org) are also linked to groups active on civil
liberties (aclu.org, eff.org), copyright issues (creativecommons.org), and the
regulation of cyberspace (cyber.law.harvard.edu). This map shows a network in
which organisations involved in a range of issues relevant to the DLM are tightly
interlinked.
As well as the activism that these organisations engage in, they are also
sometimes involved in what could be considered network building activities.
These activities include organising and promoting conferences and discussions,
as well as more informal gatherings such as dinners. Events such as these are
often conceived of primarily as spaces in which activists develop strategies for
action, but they are also important in order to build links, coalitions, and a sense
of movement identity, as has been demonstrated by the many discussions and
debates over the purpose of the WSFs (cf. Whitaker 2004; Teivainen 2004).
Although the development of network structures and movement identity is rarely
a stated goal of such events, at least in the case of the DLM, they provide a
space for the movement to grow and cohere.
While gatherings in geographically- and temporally-specific locations are
important to the construction and development of social movements, ICTs have
become increasingly useful in helping movement participants to build and
maintain networks. Participants in environmental, feminist, and other such
movements that have garnered more thorough attention within social movement
scholarship take part in discussions about their activist identities online, and use
these spaces to build and maintain connections both through ICTs and face-toface communications. For the DLM, the World Wide Web and email have
played a major role in the emergence of the movement. Boingboing, a group
blog, and Slashdot, news for nerds, are pre-eminent in this regard. While
Boingboing has a clear set of bloggers who post, and Slashdot has a cadre of
developers, editors, and official authors, both include mechanisms for readers
to suggest items, and there are comment threads attached to each post in
which readers can hold discussions. For this reason, it is useful to think of these
18

GNU is an operating system developed as a free software alternative to Unix, hence the
name: GNU's Not Unix.

110

websites as discussion forums, rather than in terms of the more traditional oneto-many media model. As Kreimer notes, the interactivity of the Internet allows
information to blend into recruitment and mobilisation (2001, 131). Both
readers and authors/developers/editors become part of a community, and have
an impact (albeit unequal) on the tone and content of the sites.
The communities that surround these sites are slowly building an understanding
of how the issues covered by the DLM are interlinked, and a sense of
involvement in a common struggle. In part, this happens through the news items
posted: both Boingboing and Slashdot regularly post items related to
developments in IP regimes and enforcement, F/LOSS, online surveillance and
rights violations, and other topics relevant to the DLM. Tags and categories help
to frame these issues; Boingboing authors regularly tag items related to
copyright and IP with copyfight, while many posts relating to the use of ICTs
for surveillance or information-gathering on citizens are tagged civlib. On
Slashdot, items are divided into categories such as linux and politics, as well
as being assigned tags such as netneutrality, p2p, privacy, and
antimicrosoft19. Authors' commentary, similarly, positions and interprets issues
within the movement's frames, and readers add to this by reinforcing, reframing,
or contesting authors' interpretations. One post about Walmart's removal of a
server that allowed customers to listen to music bought online attracted both
favourable comments and counterarguments, including a complaint from user
STANFROMBROOKLYN that Walmart's actions are no excuse for illegal
downloading. Overall, there were 78 comments on this post, which was only
one of many posts for the day (Doctorow 2008b). The importance of these sites
was emphasised in an interview with Christian Engstrm, then Vice Chairman of
the Piratpartiet, or Pirate Party, a Swedish political party that is part of the DLM.
He not only attributes his early involvement in the FFII to following discussions
about software patents on Slashdot, but also says of the Piratepartiet, we were
born out of Slashdot, people reading Slashdot (2007, pers. comm., Jul 27).
Slashdot, Boingboing, and a host of smaller websites function as spaces in
which movement participants discuss issues and build a common analysis,
creating the movement as they do so. These spaces have become key sites in
19

Slashdot readers can assign their own tags, which means that they are sometimes
contradictory. For example, an article on US voter registration was tagged with both
stuffthatmatters and whocares, as well as the more conventional politics, today,
news, usa and story (kdawson 2008).

111

the resistance to elite attempts to (re)gain control over ICTs, which are
discussed in the following section.

Section two: (re)taking the digital

In Chapter One, I discussed some of the ways in which new technologies are
being used by participants in the global justice movement. The previous chapter
built on this by examining various ways in which participants in the Indian antiGM movement fight for control of knowledge: not only access to knowledge, but
also a legitimate role for themselves as producers of knowledge. Echoing
Chapter Two, this chapter examines a movement concerned with the control of
knowledge. As in the case of the Indian movement, the DLM seeks to preserve
and to continue pre-existing traditions (in this case, the freedom and
generativity of digital technological systems). It is also attempting to combat
emerging threats to participants' control over knowledge. This section of the
chapter outlines the context in which the DLM has emerged, focusing
particularly on developments that movement participants see as threatening.
Currently, the DLM is defined in large part through its opposition to elite
attempts to (re)gain control over ICTs. It is therefore necessary to understand
these attempts in more detail.
To begin with, we must briefly revisit the changes to the technological landscape
that are tied to these threats. The latter part of the twentieth century saw a
range of interconnected developments in ICTs that have had far-reaching
effects on the world. Castells, while by no means the first to analyse these
developments, has nevertheless produced some of the most comprehensive
examinations of the ICT20 revolution and its effects on society. Castells argues
that the ICT revolution is at least as major a historical event as was the
eighteenth-century industrial revolution, and has transformed our world to a
digital one (2000, 29). As Castells' voluminous explorations of the ICT
revolution's effects imply, the consequences of these developments have been
significant and multifaceted. However, for the purposes of this chapter, there are
three interrelated aspects of recent developments that are particularly
20

Castells refers to the information technology revolution in his work. However, I prefer to
write of the information and communications technology revolution, as I feel this term more
fully encapsulates the nature of the technologies involved.

112

important: the digitisation of information, the increasing interrelationship

between online and offline spaces, and a nascent shift in how we produce
knowledge.

The digital revolution

Firstly, the ICT revolution is linked to a radical change in our ability to share
information. Digital information can be gathered, shared, and processed far
more easily than information in analogue form. Much has been made of the
social and political consequences of the development of the Gutenberg press
and the subsequent democratisation of knowledge. However, even with the
relatively accessible printing enabled by movable type (and other developments
in printing in following centuries), the information contained in printed material
remains difficult to share. The invention of photocopying technology, video
cassette recorders, and many other copying technologies of the 1980s and
1990s made it easier to pass on information, but the costs of sharing content
still remained non-trivial, and depended on the creation and transportation of
physical artefacts. The shift from analogue to digital storage of information has
opened new possibilities for collation and processing of information on a broad
scale, and has radically lowered the barriers to copying and sharing information,
in many cases making the cost of sharing of material trivial.
Castells argues that this is part of the embedded logic of the new technological
system. While he acknowledges the influence of the context of the system's
emergence, he sees it as fundamentally characterized by the capacity to
translate all inputs into a common information system, and to process such
information at increasing speed, with increasing power, at decreasing cost, in a
potentially ubiquitous retrieval and distribution network (2000, 32). Information
can be readily transferred between formats and devices; movies, books,
articles, photographs, and music can be copied innumerable times and moved
from computers to flash drives to iPods to mobile phones. The authors of a
2000 report on these issues, The Digital Dilemma, argue that a trio of
technological advances have led to these radical shifts in the economics of
information: (1) information in digital form has changed the economics of
reproduction, (2) computer networks have changed the economics of
113

distribution, and (3) the World Wide Web has changed the economics of
publication (Samuelson & Davis 2000, 7). Prior to the digitisation of
information, the knowledge economy was one of scarcity. Now, at least for
those with access to computers, the costs of copying and sharing information
are minimal.
The effects of this have been wide-ranging. Castells draws on the work of
Melvin Kranzberg and Carroll Pursell to argue that, as was the case with prior
technological revolutions, the ICT revolution has been characterised by
pervasiveness, that is by [its] penetration of all domains of human activity, not
as an exogenous source of impact, but as the fabric in which such activity is
woven (2000, 30). Developments in ICTs do not only affect us through our
direct use of technologies such as computers and the Internet. As Castells
argues in The Rise of the Network Society, they have also created significant
shifts in the economy, work, employment, and culture (2000). People of different
classes, people from different parts of the world, are affected differently, but
they are all affected. For some workers, particularly but not exclusively so-called
knowledge workers based in the Global North, a large part of both work and
leisure time has come to be structured around ICTs of one sort or another. The
ICT revolution has also changed how we experience space and place, creating
new spaces and changing how we experience familiar places.

The relationship between the real and the virtual

Secondly, it must be emphasised that while it may once have been possible to
distinguish between the real and the virtual, between offline space and
cyberspace, it is increasingly difficult to do so. During the early era of the
Internet, a mythology was built up around cyberspace. Cyberspace was seen as
disconnected from the material world, a space where people could be anyone
and do anything. This mythology was built in part on the imagined cyberspaces
of authors like William Gibson who were writing during the early days of the
World Wide Web and shaped the way in which people pictured it and its future
(Kneale 1999, 206). The habit of thinking of the World Wide Web, and the
Internet more generally, as a space separate from the material world remains
common. As Berry (2004a, 324) notes, the ontological status of the Internet
114

remains undetermined, with some researchers treating it as a space in itself,

while others treat it as a textual repository or as something else entirely.
However these deeper ontological questions are settled, it is at the very least
necessary to interrogate and disrupt assumptions that the real exists separately
from the virtual.
The notion of online interactions taking place in an immaterial space must be
abandoned. Sterling writes that [a]lthough it is not exactly "real," "cyberspace"
is a genuine place. Things happen there that have very genuine consequences
(1992). Even this reminder is not enough, as it reinforces the idea of
cyberspace as a separate place, another loosely connected layer of reality. It is
necessary to put aside, at least at one level, this idea of the virtual. At the most
fundamental level, the Internet is not virtual, but rather is built upon a material
infrastructure: users' computers and servers and fibreoptic lines and satellites
launched into space. The reality of cyberspace is underscored by a 2007 report
that found that the ICT industry was responsible for approximately two percent
of global carbon emissions (Gartner 2007). At the level of user experience, too,
it must be emphasised that claims that online I have no body and neither does
anyone else (Miller 1995, 54) should not be accepted at face value. Our online
interactions do not leave our embodied reality behindthe socialisation that
comes with a gendered body, the economic realities that accompany our
geographical locations, the educations we have been afforded, the constraints
of time zone and language...none of these can be sloughed off and left behind
when we are online. There are several good reasons for refusing to accept the
fiction that cyberspace is separate from offline space.
It is important to remember, also, that the spaces we think of as offline are
heavily enmeshed with the digital. Mobile phones are increasingly pervasive,
even (especially) in the Global South. Sterling (1992) called cyberspace THE
PLACE BETWEEN the phones; with mobile phones, we message, talk, send
and receive photos, use the Internet, all while offline, carrying this place
between the phones into the world with us. Surveillance technologies also crisscross offline spacemany cities are heavily surveilled by CCTVs, which not
only record these spaces but also shape behaviour within them. We (especially
in the Global North) leave a digital trail as we use credit cards, global
115

positioning systems, mobile phones, and radio frequency identification (RFID)

cards. Satellites gather data for governments, and projects like Google Maps
and Google Street View provide detailed data on supposedly offline places. In
countless ways, large and small, offline and online spaces are merged.
In addition to this, it is important to recognise that the ICT revolution has been
heavily shaped by its roots in particular places, as has the ongoing struggle
about the future of ICTs. Castells argues that the rapid development of ICTs in
the 1970s was clustered in the US, and particularly in California, as a result of
the autonomous dynamics of technological discovery and diffusion, including
synergistic effects between various key technologies, rather than because of
social characteristics of the US. However, the way in which the ICT revolution
developed was decisively shaped by the historical context in which it
expanded (2000, 60). Over the last three decades, this has continued to hold
true: US attitudes towards government regulation, as well as US trade and
military imperatives, have played an important role in shaping the development
of ICTs. More generally, the geographic and strategic realities of place continue
to play a role.
The importance of the US in the context of ICTs is manifested in a number of
areas. In terms of vital infrastructure, the Internet Consortium of Assigned
Names and Numbers (ICANN), which makes key decisions about domain
names, remains at least to some extent under the control of the US Department
of Commerce (Vaidhyanathan 2004a, 36-37). In addition to this, a 2001 study
found that the US acts as a central switching facility for international
connections, carrying a significant proportion of intraregional Internet traffic
(Townsend 2001, 1701-1702). While the US's role has decreased since 2001
with the growth of other nations' infrastructure, it is estimated that a quarter of
all traffic still passes through the US (Markoff 2008). The US has also had a
dramatic effect on the international use of ICTs through the War on Terror:
related US legislation such as the PATRIOT Act has been used as a model for
the expansion of government surveillance within many of their allies' borders.
The US has also been hugely influential in the development of international IP
regimes, not only through their involvement in intergovernmental organisations
such as the WTO and WIPO, but also through bilateral agreements such as the
116

free trade agreement with Russia (Samuelson 1997). Whilst actors around the
world have been taking part in the struggle for control over the future of the
Internet and other ICTs, the US continues to play an important role both through
elite attempts to control ICTs and as a site of growing resistance.

Shifts in knowledge production

Thirdly, the ICT revolution has had profound impacts on knowledge: how we
access it, how we produce it, and what we consider to be legitimate knowledge.
Some of these effects are quantitative rather than qualitative. As discussed
above, information in digital form can be shared more widely, and at a much
greater speed than information bound within books, particularly when shared
online. On a qualitative level, however, the ICT revolution has also led to shifts
in how we think about the production of knowledge. Projects such as Wikipedia,
a user-edited encyclopaedia, have opened up new possibilities for the
production of relatively reliable knowledge by people who are not officially
accredited, through a relatively decentralised process. Crowdsourcing, a new
web-based business model that harnesses the creative solutions of a
distributed network of individuals through what amounts to an open call for
proposals (Brabham 2008, 76), opens up similar possibilities for distributed,
decentralised knowledge production that does not rely on accredited experts.
The ICT revolution has led to qualitative, as well as quantitative, shifts in
knowledge production. Changes in our understanding of who produces
legitimate knowledge, and how they do so, are likely to continue in coming
years.

(Re)gaining control over information and communications

technologies
The first chapter of this dissertation explored some of the ways in which ICTs
have added to activists' toolboxes, allowing qualitative and quantitative changes
to how participants in the GJM organise and pursue their goals. The rapid
changes of the last few decades have led to a high level of openness in how
technologies have been used. Sclove argues that technologies are more open
in the early stages of their development; the flexibility associated with a given
technology [...] tends to diminish with time, as owing to the accompanying
evolution of supporting custom, entrenched interest, and various sunk costs, it
117

is often difficult to achieve radical design alterations once an initial decision has
been implemented (1995, 19). It is not only this growing institutional inertia that
solidifies the uses to which technologies can be put, but also the ways in which
different groups within society react to and shape emerging technologiesthe
attempts that are made to bring new technologies under control by established
elites. As we saw in the final section of Chapter One, elites have been making
attempts in a number of areas to gain tighter control over how knowledge is
produced and disseminated.
Just as in other areas, governments, corporations, and other elites have been
seeking to (re)establish their dominance over the Internet and related
technologies, even as social movements and other actors have explored their
liberatory or disruptive possibilities. It should be emphasised here, as it was in
the first chapter, that the motivations behind government and corporate
attempts to regain or strengthen their control over these spaces and systems
vary. In some cases, the shutting-down of these spaces of dissent has been
part of a campaign waged by authoritarian states against internal actors working
directly or indirectly against the government, as in China, Burma and Iran. In
democratic states, the same process has been at least overtly motivated by a
desire to protect vulnerable sections of the population, as with censorship of
child pornography sites in European states. The ongoing War on Terror of the
last few years has also played a significant role, with increasing government
surveillance of citizens and non-citizens. The use of surveillance technologies
has also been justified by references to more traditional law and order
concerns. While there have been some signs that elites are directly concerned
with activists' use of ICTs, such as the inclusion of anti-globalisation hackers in
a US military training scenario (Caldwell & Hunter 2002), on the whole social
movements have not been the direct target for these measures.
Campaigns waged by governments to bring the technological systems of the
Information Age under their control have not been waged purely to secure the
national interest in a traditional sense, but have also been closely linked to
corporate interests. Corporations have a variety of motivations for attempting to
develop the way in which information age technologies are used and develop,

118

primarily their desire to prevent theft of intellectual property in order to secure

or increase their profits from commercialisation of particular technologies.

National security, law and order, and surveillance

The

same

technologies

that

allow

social

movement

participants

an

unprecedented ability to communicate with each other and their audiences also
vastly increase governments' ability to watch their own citizens (Graham &
Wood 2003). One example of this is the use of cheap cameras and
computational analysis of digital communications, license plates, and facial
recognition systems. Additionally, spaces of digital communication are
themselves coming under increasing surveillance. This is well-recognised in the
case of authoritarian states, where online communications and publications
have been monitored and activists and journalists have been jailed or otherwise
punished for their work. One of the most frequently-discussed examples of this
is China's extensive content control system, in which large teams of paid
government officials monitor blogs and other websites. All Chinese Internet
users must sign in with their real names whenever they go online, even in
Internet cafs (Fallows 2008; Chinese Human Rights Defenders 2009).
However, it is important to recognise that this surveillance is by no means
absent from democratic states. In the United States, whistle-blowers have
brought attention to widespread surveillance of digital communications,
including mobile phone communication, by government agencies, particularly
the National Security Agency. In 2006 Mark Klein, a former AT&T technician,
brought to light evidence that AT&T had built spy rooms that had the capacity
for surveillance and analysis of Internet content on a massive scale (Singel
2007). Subsequently, the United States Senate under Bush voted to legalise
such operations, and granted amnesty to telecommunications companies that
had been involved through amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act (Singel 2008). This move has been supported by the Obama administration
and by Judge Walker of the US District Court for the Northern District of
California (Electronic Frontier Foundation 2009). The scale of this surveillance,
as well as United States government responses when it was brought to light,
gives reason to suppose that it is likely to continue, if not to escalate.

119

Such surveillance is also taking place in other democratic nations, although

usually on a smaller scale. The most radical example so far is Sweden's 2008
bill allowing the National Defence Radio Establishment to monitor international
telephone and electronic communications. The bill was passed with revisions
which allowed for some independent oversight, but numerous concerns
remained, including the possibility that the bill would enable the monitoring of
domestic, as well as foreign, traffic (Goodin 2008; Montgomery 2008). Reports
in 2009 also indicated that the UK government was developing facilities for
more widespread surveillance of a range of communications data, although the
home secretary at the time, Jacqui Smith, denied that such a plan existed
(Leppard & Williams 2009). Laws such as these may affect not just citizens
living in the states concerned, but all Internet users, as the structure of the
Internet means that information often travels across the globe before reaching
its destination.
Surveillance of citizens and non-citizens by governments has also been justified
through law and order concerns, as is the case with London's extensive
program of CCTVs (McCahill & Norris 2002, 6). Many police programs relating
to the Internet can also be seen as an adaptation of existing law and order
concerns to cover new technologies. For example, investigations into child
pornography rings or the blocking of child pornography websites extend existing
efforts to curb child pornography, rather than introducing new concerns.
Government attempts to curb piracy online have an uneasy relationship to
these extensions of traditional law and order concerns. On the one hand, they
do fit in with pre-existing copyright enforcement, which was predominantly
aimed at large-scale producers of pirated material. On the other hand, they
extend government enforcement (often hand-in-hand with private entities such
as Internet service providers (ISPs) or the RIAA) to cover small-scale violations
of copyright on an unprecedented scope. The future of these initiatives will
depend upon the technical feasibility of carrying out large-scale monitoring of
Internet use, as well as on responses by sections of the DLM and other
concerned actors.

120

Corporate surveillance
While government-mandated surveillance is worthy of significant concern,
various companies are also accumulating highly personal information about
those who use their services. Google, Amazon, and Yahoo, for example, all hold
extensive databases on users for months, if not years. For companies which
have control over a broad swathe of email services, photo management
accounts, social networking sites, and blog hosts, this information can provide a
detailed picture of users' lives and activities. Such databases have occasionally
been accidentally breached, as in the case of America Online's release of
identifiable search strings in 2006 (Kawamoto & Mils 2006). The recent shift
towards cloud computing, in which data is stored online rather than on users'
computers, vastly increases the power that corporations providing such services
will have to gather, store, and process information about their customers
(Andrejevic 2007). Whilst the motivations for this data-gathering predominantly
centre on customer service and targeted advertising, users have raised a
number of concerns, including the loss of privacy associated with data
breaches.
There are also serious concerns about the overlap between data-gathering by
corporations and government surveillance in both democratic and authoritarian
states. In 2003 and 2006, Yahoo handed over data on Li Zhi and Shi Tao to the
Chinese government, which led to the subsequent arrest and jailing of the two
bloggers (Blakely 2006). In the US, data gathered by a third party, for example
email stored on Gmail, Google's mail service, can be requested by intelligence
services under section 215 of the PATRIOT Act. Whereas a warrant is usually
required to access data stored on one's own computer, the target of
surveillance may be entirely unaware that their data has been accessed, as any
party served with a section 215 order may neither disclose nor appeal the order
(Zittrain 2008, 186). Those who use online email services, calendars, blogs, and
photo services expose much of their life to such breaches of privacy.
Additionally, national borders provide limited protection, as users may be
subject to surveillance originating in the state where their service provider is
located, as well as the state in which they live.

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Protecting intellectual property

The most vocal opposition has been directed at a range of measures taken to
protect intellectual property. These measures have escalated in recent years,
largely in response to the emergence of peer-to-peer technologies, but they are
by no means new. In the 1970s, the music industry ran a campaign against
cassette-taping that featured a cassette-shaped skull and the caption Home
taping is killing music (Lessig 2004, 314). When the VCR was made available
in the 1980s, Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) president Jack
Valenti said that it was the Boston Strangler of the American film industry, and
attempted to have it banned (Lessig 2004, 76). As noted above, the digitisation
of culture allows copying and sharing on a far greater scale than music
cassettes or VCRs ever did. Not only can an unlimited number of copies be
made of any digital content, but if that content is put online it can be accessed
by a wide audience. It is unsurprising, then, that the music and movie industries
have increasingly sought ways to control the flow of content. As well as
technical barriers to copying and sharing content discussed below, corporate
lobby groups have, in tandem with some governments, made efforts to
consolidate and expand existing regimes surrounding such content.
There has been a significant expansion of copyright legislation's coverage in
many countries, particularly the United States. Lessig (2004, 136-139) provides
an analysis of various changes to copyright legislation in the US since its first
inception in 1790, including the extension of copyright to cover derivative works .
Perhaps the most far-reaching changes to US domestic legislation are
embodied in the DMCA, enacted by the US Congress in 1998. The DMCA was
part of the Clinton Administration's attempts to ensure that the National
Information Infrastructure was made safe for digital content, which needed to
be protected from unauthorised copying and distribution (Benkler 2006, 413).
The DMCA was a voluminous document with numerous provisions, among
which are laws which make it illegal to circumvent technical protection
mechanisms (discussed below) and laws which required online service
providers to immediately remove materials deemed to be infringing copyright
upon request by copyright holders (Samuelson & Davis 2000; Benkler 2006,
414). Siva Vaidhyanathan argues that these provisions are replacing a humanbased, democratically generated system with misplaced faith in cold, blunt
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technology (2004a, 87). The DMCA has been the most extreme case of what
Benkler calls paracopyright legislation (2004, 383), but the European Union
and other developed states have also enacted similar legislation.
There has also been an extension of international IP regimes that were
developing prior to the shift to digital media. In the 1980s the US government,
along with several other leading trading nations, began to see IP as a new basis
of comparative advantage, a way to meet the challenges raised by the gradual
erosion

of

competitiveness

in

some

traditional

areas

of

production

(Subramanian 1991, 945). Halbert follows Alford in arguing that the prioritisation
of IP as a trade issue during the 1980s was a result of US government attempts
to provide a clear answer to why the United States was having difficulties in the
world market (1999, 81). By focusing on foreign piracy, the White House was
able to place the blame for the growing trade deficit on external sources, and to
simultaneously address the frustration at both piracy and legitimate competition
expressed by US exporters dependent on IP (Alford in Halbert 1999, 81). The
US has increasingly pushed for strong international IP protection, and has been
largely responsible for the inclusion of IPR in international institutions such as
the General Agreement on Trades and Tariffs (GATT), as well as bilateral
agreements, such as the United States-Canada Free Trade Agreement (Halbert
1999, 79). Samuelson (1997) provides extensive documentation of the US'
relatively successful attempts to incorporate its concerns into the 1996 WIPO
conference's agenda, while also noting the power that TRIPS gives to firms.
This incorporation of IPR into international and bilateral agreements has
continued to play a large role in US trade policy. It also reflects back into US
domestic legislation: instruments such as the DMCA are described by
supporters as being necessary for meeting commitments made in WIPO
meetings (Benkler 2004, 414), as well as being used to justify further extensions
of international IP regimes in the name of harmonisation.
Several scholars have argued that current changes to national and international
IP regimes do not merely represent a quantitative shift in the extent of copyright.
Rather, they represent a qualitative shift in how we conceive the ownership and
control of cultural content (Vaidhyanathan 2004a; Lessig 2004; Halbert 1999).
When copyright and related laws were developed in Europe, and later in the
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United States and other nations, they were a way to grant a limited monopoly to
creaters, inventors, discoverers or marketers in order to offer an incentive for
innovation. Balanced against this limited monopoly was the idea that new
discoveries and creative works should enter the public domain after a limited
time (Vaidhyanathan 2004a, 88). The term intellectual property is a relatively
new one, originating only in the last century (Vaidhyanathan 2004a, 87).
Copyright and patent law were significantly different, and their incorporation
under the umbrella concept of intellectual property is a relatively recent
development.
The narrative that has been constructed around IP is a significant revision of the
idea of copyright as a temporary monopoly. This narrative equates intellectual
property with private property in its traditional sense, removing it from the realm
of the public domain. In this narrative, sharing becomes stealing. Creative work
becomes private property (Halbert 1999, 101). One of the clearest
demonstrations of this was the MPAA's (2004) You Wouldn't Steal A Car
advertisement, in which a voiceover says, You wouldn't steal a car. You
wouldn't steal a handbag. You wouldn't steal a mobile phone. You wouldn't steal
a movie. Movie piracy is stealing. Stealing is against the law. Piracy. It's a
crime. Advertisement campaigns such as this one have been accompanied by
lobbying and other attempts to build the idea of creative work as private
property into an unproblematic and widely accepted cultural and legal
framework for IP.

As well as attempts to control the spread of creative content through legal

means, industries with an interest in protecting IP have been attempting to build
technological systems and devices that limit the range of uses to which they can
be put. Digital rights management21 technology, software which prevents users
from accessing, copying or distributing certain content, is one example of this.
So, for example, if you buy a CD with DRM, you may not be able to make a
copy of it on your computer or music player. If you buy a copy-protected DVD in
Asia, you may not be able to play it in the US. Trusted computing, an initiative
currently under consideration by sections of the music, movie, and computer
21

Opponents of DRM refer to it as digital restrictions management, but this term has not
entered wide usage.

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industries, would extend the idea behind DRM to computers as a whole,

stopping users from installing unauthorised software (Anderson 2003).
Technical protection measures such as these are significantly strengthened by
domestic and international legislation against the circumvention of copyprotection technology, including the DMCA. In addition to the ongoing
development of DRM technology, there has been a shift towards tethered
appliances which place more control in the hands of their makers than their
users (Zittrain 2008), and an ongoing struggle over which corporate interests
will be prioritised when it comes to the workings of the Internet itself.

Controlling knowledge
On one level, these struggles focus around particular technologies or laws. On
another level, they are far-reaching and fundamental attempts that are being
made to control the democratising possibilities of new technologies. Changing
notions of IP, DRM, and the DMCA all work in concert to define who is
considered to have legitimate access to certain information, and under what
conditions. As noted in Steal This Film II (The League of Noble Peers 2007),
knowledge and information has always been controlledbefore the time of the
Gutenberg Press, books were not only produced in limited numbers but also
sometimes guarded and chained. To control others' access to this information,
you only had to control their access to the actual physical artefacts that
contained it. With the advent of ubiquitous digital content, it is increasingly
easier to transfer information between devices. The measures discussed above
limit people's ability to transfer information in an uncontrolled way, but on a
more fundamental level the concept of intellectual property, as well as specific
national and international IP regimes, shape the extent to which people are
considered to have a rightethically and legallyto access and share
information. Debates about the conditions under which citizens should be able
to access intellectual property have been largely separated from debates about
government and corporate data-gathering. However, these questions belong
within the same broad framework: what power do different kinds of knowledge
bring, and who should have access to that power?

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Interwoven with attempts to control access to information are attempts to uphold

certain groups as legitimate producers of knowledge in the face of
democratising trends. The concept of users is important here. Benkler argues
that the idea of a user implies a new category of relationship to information
production and exchange (2006, 138). Rather than being either a consumer or
a producer of software, for example, a user switches between roles, contributing
to development as well as consuming the product. The emergence of the idea
that laypeople can be producers of knowledge has been lauded in some
corners and heavily criticised in others. Establishing the necessity of user
access to information and control over technology requires, at some level, an
understanding that users have valuable contributions to make. Activists within
the DLM must continually reinforce the idea that the videos, source code,
music, mashups, and so on that are produced by amateurs are worth saving,
despite the harm that it may cause to more well-established producers
(including academics, the movie and music industry, journalists, and other
accredited sources). Benkler argues that today, proprietary, market-based
models of information production compete with those that are individual, social,
and peer produced (2006, 382). For example, Microsoft's Windows and
Encyclopaedia Britannica compete with Linux and Wikipedia. Is accepted
knowledgebe it a line of software code or an encyclopaedia entryto be
decided by companies, by small groups of experts, or by peer review? Lessig
(2004) provides another way of thinking about this: as a struggle between a
mode in which the ability to produce and distribute cultural content (such as
films, music, software and novels) is controlled by an oligopoly, and one in
which everyone has the right to do so.

As is the case with many of the issues addressed by social movements,

governments play a contradictory role, being appealed to by both activists and
entrenched elites. As discussed above, the US government has primarily
aligned itself with the interests of established industries, and has sought to
cement its own control over ICTs in a number of ways. However, it has at times
supported activists' positions, as when President Obama declared that he
remain[s] firmly committed to net neutrality [discussed below] so we can keep
the Internet as it should beopen and free (2009). The EU has also taken
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some steps which activists may find heartening, including the development of
an Open Source Observatory to support open source software development
(Battistoni 2008). Governments in the Global South also have a complex role in
relation to these issues. While on the one hand many have shown a willingness
to use ICTs for censorship and surveillance (as have many democratic states),
their stance on copyright has been more complex. Some states, such as Iran,
have refused to join international IP regimes, while others have been unwilling
or unable to enforce IPR. The role of national governments in the struggle over
ICTs therefore remains contested, with multiple forces within and outside of
government attempting to shape their approach to the issues discussed in this
chapter.

Section three: the emergence of the digital liberties movement

This section returns to a more detailed discussion of the emergence of the
DLM, exploring its roots in previous movements and communities and landmark
struggles. Many of the values and ideas which define the DLM show a clear
lineage from hacker communities, the free culture movement, and the F/LOSS
movement. These values and ideas include an emphasis on the importance of
user control over technology and on freedom (predominantly defined with
reference to the US political system). These communities and movements
overlap with the DLM, and have contributed leading digital liberties activists to
the DLM. After exploring the roots of the DLM, this section moves on to outline
landmark struggles in the emergence of the DLM, explaining the ways in which
these struggles have defined the movement.

Roots in previous movements and communities

The DLM, like many other movements, has been created from the enmeshment
of various other movements, organisations, campaigns, and individuals. These
include free culture groups, the F/LOSS community, hacker culture, (online) civil
liberties groups, media activists, and others. It also includes a great number of
people who have participated in a single action, or in a few scattered actions.
Academics have played a significant role within the movement, as they do in
many social movements either in a capacity separate from their academic work
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or through this work itself. Although there are methodological difficulties in

ascertaining to what degree this is the case, my sense is that academics play
an even larger role in the DLM than they do in most other movements. This is in
part because the movement's focus on the technical infrastructure of computers
and the Internet, and on IP, invites participation from those with tertiary
qualifications in either law or computer science, and those with the time and
resources to research these issues. Additionally, academics have a vested
stake in debates over access to information and debates about how knowledge
is produced, as both producers and consumers of research.
As noted in the Introduction, this needs to be taken into account in analysing the
movement. For example, Lessig's Free Culture is a scholarly work by a
respected academic, and can be studied from that perspective. In the context of
Lessig's activism, however, including the battle over the Sonny Bono Copyright
Extension Act that he describes in the book and played a key role in, it is
simultaneously a piece of movement literature which aims to convince and
involve the reader. Similarly, Vaidhyanathan writes that he is an activist with
specific goals in mind: I want to keep these [online peer-to-peer music-sharing]
channels open and the music flowing, and I want to change the terms of the
conversation that has dominated the accounts of the phenomenon (2004a, 61).
Additionally, as Vaidhyanathan notes, academics who take part in filesharing
and are part of the DLM have a privileged status, in that their work is to debate
and think about issues (2004a, 62). Academics are skilled at phrasing their
arguments, and academic careers these days are geared towards a constant
stream of publications. As such, academics have a privileged position not only
in terms of having the time and skills to formulate their arguments on topics like
filesharing, but also in that they are well positioned to take on a public role as
chief propagandists for the movement.
Although civil liberties activists, academics, and artists play a significant role in
the movement, its background in the F/LOSS community and hacker culture
has probably been most formative, and hence requires some further
exploration. Many of the participants, values, and organisational strategies of
the DLM have either come from or overlap with hacker culture and the F/LOSS

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movement. Understanding the DLM therefore requires some understanding of

hacker culture, as well as of the F/LOSS movement.

Hackers
There are many myths that surround hacker culture, and even the word hacker
has different meanings in the context of computer culture, law, and other fields.
It is not my intention to get into the minutiae of either the history of hackers and
hacking, or the debates that surround this history and the activity itself 22. It has
become almost mandatory to protest against association of hacking with
malicious and illegal online behaviour, including computer crime and computer
intrusion, labelled cracking rather than hacking by many (Jordan & Taylor
2004, 5; Castells 2001, 41; Himanen 2001). As Sterling notes, hackers come in
a variety of odd subcultures, with a variety of languages, motives and values
(1992), and I do not intend to get into an ethnographic classification of hacker
subcultures. These communities, behaviours and identities overlap, and such a
dissection is not relevant to this work. What is important is the way in which
ideals and norms developed in the hacker community have carried through from
this culture into the DLM.
It is relevant, in building an understanding of hacker culture and its influence on
the DLM, to trace its emergence back to the movements of the 1960s and
1970s, which it grew out of and co-evolved with. Sterling argues that the
genuine roots of the modern hacker underground can be traced to a now muchobscured hippie anarchist movement known as the Yippies, a movement led
(insofar as it had a leader) by Abbie Hoffman whose basic tenets were flagrant
sexual promiscuity, open and copious drug use, the political overthrow of any
powermonger over thirty years of age, and an immediate end to the war in
Vietnam, by any means necessary, including the psychic levitation of the
Pentagon (1992). The Yippies began their involvement with the world of
hacking by making extensive use of the phone system for agitation work, and
argued that by denying the federal government the tax charged for phone calls
they were engaging in civil disobedience, refusing to support the US
government's war in Vietnam (Sterling 1992; Jordan & Taylor 2004, 13). From
22

For a classic history of the topic, see Levy's Hackers (1984).

129

here, the Yippies moved towards a more radical and thorough engagement with
the telephone system.
This was done in large part through publications that made hacks of the phone
system more widely available. In 1971 the Youth International Party Line
newsletter, an underground publication put out by those associated with the
Yippie movement, changed its name to the Technological American Party
(TAP)23, and began to provide detailed technical information, predominantly
about how to phone-phreak (obtain free phone calls through the technical
manipulation of the phone system) (Jordan & Taylor 2004, 14). Over time, TAP
shifted towards a technical, rather than political, focus, and when it ceased
publication in 1984 its mantle was taken up by the phone-phreak/hacker
magazine 2600 (Sterling 1992; Jordan & Taylor 2004, 14). In some senses,
what was once an overtly political movement transformed into a movement that
revelled in technical power. However, traces of the Yippie influence and a
political stance remained. For example, the pseudonym adopted by 2600's
editor, Emmanuel Goldstein, is the name of the protagonist in Orwell's 1984
(Jordan & Taylor 2004, 14). This background is important, not only for the
political overtones the association bought to the movement, but also because it
helps in understanding that hacking is not necessarily something that only takes
place on computers, or on the Internet.
There are many competing definitions of who should be considered a hacker.
Jordan and Taylor get around the issue by defining a hacker as anyone who
performs hacksuses of technology that are original, unorthodox and
inventive, building on Turkle's description of hacks as uses of technology that
are simple, masterful and illicit (Jordan & Taylor 2004, 6). This is the original
use of the term hacker, from the early days of computer use at American
universities, particularly MIT. This use of the terms hack and hacker remains in
common use. MAKE magazine's online blog, for example, frequently refers to
ways to hack children's toys, coffee machines, baby perambulators and other
non-computer technologies in order to perform unusual feats with them, or in
order to circumvent prescriptive limits put in place to intentionally cripple them.
MAKE's Owner's Manifesto declares that If you can't open it, you don't own it
23

Or Technical Assistance Program, according to Sterling (1992).

130

(Mr. Jalopy), which has a conscious resonance with the traditional hacker
perspective.
Hacker communities have made a number of important contributions to the
DLM. The first of these is the idea that users should have control over the
technology which they use, rather than technology controlling users. Activists
within the DLM apply this to a wide range of technologies and spaces, as we
will see below. Secondly, communities and individuals heavily involved in
hacking have played a role in forming the DLM and continue to be active within
the movement. Richard Stallman, one of the founders of the free/libre software
movement discussed below and a paradigmatic hacker, contributed the idea of
the copyleft license, and remains active and influential within the movement.
Similarly, one attendee at the last Hackers on Planet Earth Conference noted
that the hacker community present at the conference displayed an interest in
issues related to digital liberties, including copyright [...] The Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA), censorship, [and] the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
(DCMA), and were interested in developing links with other communities
(Abbott 2008). There are also a number of other threads common to hacker
culture that run through the DLM, including an oppositional attitude towards
corporations.

The free/libre and open source software movement

Many scholars of and participants in online cultures see the F/LOSS movement
as a subset of hacker culture, or as an overlapping movement or community.
Either assessment is fair, depending on how each is defined. The F/LOSS
community centres around the development and dissemination of free/libre or
open source software, in opposition to proprietary, non-free or closed software.
The Windows operating system is an example of proprietary software. You have
to buy it, it is illegal to copy to it, and you cannot legally see or modify the
source code24 on which it runs. In the case of proprietary software, you are
24

Machine code is the most basic level of code, and is expressed digitally and numerically. It is
very difficult and time consuming to write or read, although in the early years of hacking
programming was done directly with machine code. Source code is a step above machine
codeit is written in a variety of highly abstracted languages [which] use a formalized
syntax and are usually constructed around simplified English keywords. Together with
symbols and punctuation, programs are written in a structured syntactical style made up of
statements, loops and conditionals to construct the logical operation of the program. Source
code needs to be compiled into machine code to be read and executed by a computer.

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supplied with an executablea file with a .exe extensionthat is not in the

more easily comprehensible form of source code. Although it is possible to
reverse-engineer the source code from this, it is complex, time-consuming, and
usually illegal to do so (Berry 2004, 67). In contrast, F/LOSS is licensed under
the GNU General Public License (GPL) and other copyleft 25 licenses which
allow users to see the source code and change it, and to use and redistribute
the software for free. This attempt to describe F/LOSS may give some hint as to
why the movement has, until recently, been the province of hackers and others
comfortable with computing technology and jargon.
In recent years, however, there has been a move towards making F/LOSS more
accessible, adding to its significant popularity in technical circles. While the
spread of F/LOSS for specialised uses such as web servers is notable (Moody
2001, 129; Wheeler 2005), the use of F/LOSS in ubiquitous software is likely to
be more important. For example, several F/LOSS web browsers have been
developed, and are gaining popularity. Mozilla's Firefox has made significant
inroads into the browser market, having over 20 per cent of the usage share as
of May 2009 (Wikipedians 2009c). Open Office, a F/LOSS alternative to
Microsoft Word, was estimated to have 11 million active users in the US alone in
March of 2009 (Asay 2009). Linux 26, which in 2001 could reasonably be
described as too complicated to use for most individual users and without a
simple (graphical) user interface (Castells 2001, 46), now comes in several
user-friendly flavours27, most notably Ubuntu, the motto of which is Linux for
human beings. Additionally, the development of a child-friendly, Linux-based
operating system for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, intended for
distribution in the Global South, has been an important milestone. Although the
OLPC project has foundered somewhat in recent years, it inspired a number of
low-cost netbooks which cost under AU$500 and frequently run on customised
flavours of Linux that lower costs. While users and institutions may often adopt

25

26

27

Source code files also frequently contain explanatory notes written by programmers to allow
others to understand their work (Berry 2004, 67).
A term coined by Richard Stallman to denote a license that is more anti-license than
anything else, enforcing sharing of code rather than its restriction (Wayner 2000, 5).
Linux is referred to as GNU/Linux by Stallman and the FSF, who argue that Linux's base in
the GNU operating system should be recognised in its name. I use the term Linux for
simplicity rather than to indicate any partisanship on this issue.
Different versions of Linux are usually known as flavours.

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F/LOSS for pragmatic reasons, as adoption grows it frequently brings with it

exposure to some of the ideals behind the F/LOSS movement.
The distinction between free software and open source software is based on
what some see as a relatively minor ideological difference, while for others it is
a major point and a centre of vociferous disagreements. A common phrase in
the F/LOSS movement is that free software is free as in speech, not free as in
beer. The GPL specifies that licensees may not prevent others from accessing
their products for free, but may charge a fee to cover the costs of distribution
(Chiao 2003, 3). Richard Stallman's GNU Manifesto sets out four freedoms for
free software (Stallman in Wayner 2000, 84):
Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
Freedom 1: The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to
your needs.
Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your
neighbour.
Freedom 3: The freedom to improve the program, and release your
improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits.
This emphasis on free as in speech, with all the associations attached to the
word free (particularly in the US context) is something that Stallman and the
FSF have deliberately clung to.
For Stallman and other proponents of free software, the meanings attached to
free reinforce their commitment to free software for reasons that are political
and moral, not merely technical. To those on this side of the free versus open
debate,
The word free is ... about a way of life. The folks who write the code
throw around the word in much the same way the Founding Fathers of
the United States used it. To many of them, the free software revolution
was also conceived in liberty and dedicated to certain principles like the
fact that all men and women have certain inalienable rights to change,

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modify, and do whatever they please with their software in the pursuit of
happiness (Wayner 2000, 78).
For some, this approach is absolutely vital to a meaningful commitment to free
software. For others, it adds an unnecessary political dimension to an
essentially technical issue.
Those who support the open source software position emphasise the technical,
rather than moral and political, benefits of F/LOSS. Torvalds writes:
there are enormous benefits to be gained by opening up one's
technology and making it available under the same terms as Linux and a
host of other inventions. To get a glimpse of those benefits, all you have
to do is just look at the comparatively low standards of quality of any
closed software project. The GPL and open source model allows for the
creation of the best technology. It's that simple (Torvalds & Diamond
2001, 194).
Eric Raymond puts it this way:
Perhaps in the end the open-source culture will triumph not because
cooperation is morally right or software hoarding is morally wrong
(assuming you believe the latter, which neither Linus [Torvalds] nor I do),
but simply because the closed-source world cannot win an evolutionary
arms race with open-source communities that can put orders of
magnitude more skilled time into a problem (2000, 23).
Open source programming is better, according to this viewpoint, simply because
it produces better software, measured against technical standards.
Despite the occasional sniping from either side, advocates of both approaches,
including the 'grandfather' of free software and Linux's 'benevolent dictator',
stress their willingness to cooperate with each other. Stallman writes:

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The relationship between the Free Software movement and the Open
Source movement is just the opposite of that picture [of a conflictual
relationship]. We disagree on the basic principles, but agree more or less
on the practical recommendations. So we can and do work together on
many specific projects. We don't think of the Open Source movement as
an enemy. The enemy is proprietary software (Stallman 2005).
While Linus Torvalds does not entirely agree with Stallman's perspective, he
does say that Stallman deserves a monument in his honor for giving birth to the
GPL (Torvalds & Diamond 2001, 194). Open source advocates also frequently,
if not necessarily consciously, demonstrate a political or ethical reasoning for
their support for open source software, as in the case of Torvalds' equation of
the open source software model with democracy (Torvalds & Diamond 2001,
230). While it is therefore useful to take note of the difference between the free
software and open source software positions, it is important to bear in mind that
the boundaries between the two are blurry.
The F/LOSS movement overlaps with and feeds into the DLM, and has inspired
many of its activists. For example, Lessig writes in the preface to Free Culture
that much of the inspiration for the book came from the work of Richard
Stallman and the Free Software Foundation; Indeed, as I reread Stallmans
own work [...] I realize that all of the theoretical insights I develop here are
insights Stallman described decades ago (2004, xv). There are four important
aspects in which the values of the F/LOSS movement are reflected and
reinforced in the DLM. The first of these is the priority placed on users' access
to and control over the technologies that they use, in this case software. The
GPL emphasises not only the ability to access software, but also to adapt it
where necessary. The second important aspect is the value placed on peer
evaluation of knowledge and the contributions of amateurs. While most F/LOSS
is nominally controlled by a developer team, or an individual who decides which
suggested improvements to include in future versions, anyone can critique and
develop the source code. F/LOSS advocates argue that this is ideologically
and/or technically preferential to a model of software development that relies on
accredited experts. Thirdly, there is a strong sense of both the importance of the
individual and the value of community. The freedom repeatedly referred to is
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heavily influenced by the US model of liberal democracy and its individualist

ideals. At the same time, the GPL embodies an acknowledgement that
individuals benefit from and have a responsibility to contribute to the community.
Finally, the split between the the free/libre perspective and the open source
approach is illustrative of a broader tension within the DLM between
approaches that prioritise technical considerations and those that are more
willing to engage with debates about the political consequences of technology.

Landmarks in the emergence of the digital liberties movement

Movements are built both through the slow process of dialogue and networking,
and through the connections made through protest. There have been a number
of issues that have served as rallying points for the DLM. Some of these have
involved protracted campaigns, while others have been swift protests which
were resolved rapidly. These cases illustrate the key modes of contention
employed by digital liberties activists. While in most of these struggles activists
have relied heavily on institutionalised modes of contention, particularly
lobbying and legal challenges, direct action has been used repeatedly and
effectively. These cases provide multiple examples of activists using
technological solutions to sidestep legal barriers to sharing information.
Following a brief outline of each landmark case, I will use these examples to
explore recurring themes within the movement in more detail, including the
importance of user control over technology, the need to protect amateur
production, and the links made between democratic principles and issues
related to copyright and code.

Eldred vs. Ashcroft

In 1998, the US Congress extended the terms of existing copyright for the
eleventh time in 40 years, by 20 years. Eric Eldred, who had been planning to
publish various works that were due to enter the public domain, announced that
he would publish as planned, despite the extension of copyright on these works.
His intentions were stymied by the passing of the 1998 No Electronic Theft Act
by the US Congress, which meant that publishing would have made Eldred a
felon (Lessig 2004, 215). Lawrence Lessig was among those who decided to
challenge the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) on the basis
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that repeated extensions of US copyright act created a perpetual copyright,

rather than the limited copyright specified in the US Constitution.
Ultimately the case was lost, but despite this it has become an important
moment in the history of the DLM. Lessig's description of the case in the latter
part of his 2004 book, Free Culture, emphasises the breadth and depth of
support that the team drew on. As well as support from academics, libraries, five
Nobel Prize-winning economists, and lawyers of various stripes, the team also
garnered assistance from Hal Roach Studios and the Eagle Forum (Lessig
2004, 231-233), a conservative and pro-family group (Eagle Forum 2008).
Lessig recognises the importance of the case, writing that, [t]he night before
the argument, a line of people began to form in front of the Supreme Court. The
case had become a focus of the press and of the movement to free culture.
Hundreds stood in line for the chance to see the proceedings (2004, 237-238).
The case's importance is also emphasised by others within the DLM, including
Vaidhyanathan (2004b). Unlike in the cases of the DeCSS code, the 09F9 key,
and the Grey Album, discussed below, this fight was decisively lost. There is,
however, a sense within the movement that while the CTEA was upheld, the
larger struggle over copyright terms continues.

DeCSS
In 2000, a small group of hackers created a program that would allow users to
circumvent the content scrambling system (CSS), a form of DRM that was
created to prevent unauthorised access to DVDs. The program, called DeCSS,
or Decrypt Content Scrambling System, allowed the hackers to play DVDs on
their computers, which ran Linux. 2600: The Hacker Quarterly published several
articles on DeCSS, and included the code in the text. After complaints from the
movie industry, 2600 was forbidden from publishing information on DeCSS.
Instead the editor, Corley, writing as Emmanuel Goldstein, linked to other sites
that ran the code. The judge followed by issuing an injunction against such
linking. The court eventually ruled that the right to free speech was not sufficient
to protect Corley and he was not allowed to publish the code or links to the code
(Lievrouw 2003, 8; Vaidhyanathan 2004a, 70-72). At least in court, the battle
was over by 2001.
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Activism around the DeCSS code took a number of forms. Corley's willingness
to publish the code and defend himself in court was notable, but perhaps more
important was the surge of support that rapidly built up around him. The DeCSS
code was disseminated around the web and through peer to peer networks. It
remains available at the time of writing. Reasoning that works of art are covered
by First Amendment speech protections, David Touretzky (2000) and other
supporters of Corley set up on online gallery of works incorporating the code.
The gallery features versions of the code represented within haikus, t-shirts,
dramatic readings, songs, and yearbook pages. While the court was successful
in banning publication of the code in 2600, they were completely ineffective in
preventing the spread of the code and easy access to it.

Diebold Election Systems vs. the Internet

In 2003, an activist researching electronic voting machines, Bev Harris, found a
site that stored thousands of files on how the Diebold electronic voting
machines worked. These files provided information that allowed Diebold
machine passwords to be bypassed, which was worrying given the use of the
machines in US elections. Harris published her findings in an online magazine
called Scoop, and later published an analysis of the discussions that had taken
place around the files. A large number of internal emails were also leaked from
Diebold to Wired magazine, as well as to Harris, who published them on her
website. Diebold responded by claiming that the emails were under copyright,
and demanding that Harris, her ISP, and a number of other sites remove them,
an order which was complied with. University students throughout the United
States began storing and analysing the emails, and continued to do so until
they, too, were required to remove them by Diebold's invocation of provisions of
the DMCA (Benkler 2006, 227-229). As in the case of the DeCSS code, it
rapidly became clear that it would not be possible for Diebold to put the cat back
in the bag.

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Benkler recounts the multipronged campaign that the students then engaged in:
First, they kept moving the files from one student to anothers machine,
encouraging students around the country to resist the efforts to eliminate
the material. Second, they injected the materials into FreeNet, the
anticensorship peer-to-peer publication network, and into other peer-topeer file-sharing systems, like eDonkey and BitTorrent. Third, supported
by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, one of the primary civil-rights
organizations concerned with Internet freedom, the students brought suit
against Diebold, seeking a judicial declaration that their posting of the
materials was privileged. They won both the insurgent campaign and
the formal one (2006, 31).
The success of this campaign is clear: the materials remained online throughout
the case, and ultimately the legal case was won.

Grey Tuesday
In 2004 Brian Burton, working as DJ Danger Mouse, created a mashup of the
Beatle's White Album and Jay-Z's Black Album, called the Grey Album. Jay-Z
had offered up a capella versions of all of his tracks on vinyl for remixes, but
EMI/Capitol, which owns the rights to the White Album, was less open to
experimentation and served Burton with a cease-and-desist order (Mason 2008,
97). Burton has said that he did not undertake the project with intentions of
making a statement about copyright law, but was just trying to make an art
project (Rimmer 2007, 133). This explains his rapid cooperation with
EMI/Capitol. This cooperation was not enough to get Burton off the hook: Sony,
which owns the Beatles' composition rights, also threatened legal action (Mason
2008, 97). Burton may have been willing to cooperate with the demands made
by these companies, but a number of activists (and hitherto uninvolved
individuals) were less malleable.
On February 24th 2004, thousands of users were involved in a protest called
Grey Tuesday, in which they defied the cease-and-desist letters by downloading
the Grey Album. At least 170 websites hosted the album for download, and
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many of the owners kept the album online despite receiving cease-and-desist
letters themselves (McLeod 2005, 80). Downhill Battle, a music activism project,
organised the protest, and set up a website to publicise it. On the site, Downhill
Battle (2008) argue that the attempt to censor this record is one of the most
clear-cut examples of what's wrong with current sampling rules, and that major
record labels use copyright in a reactionary and narrowly self-interested
manner that limits and erodes creativity. Activists were protesting the fact that
copyright law was being used to prevent amateurs from sampling and remixing
music. This activism has ensured that the Grey Album has remained available,
as well as a number of similar remixes inspired by Grey Tuesday.

09F9
In 2007 there was another highly visible protest around DRM, this time about
the sharing of an encryption key known as 09F9 that facilitated the breaking of
restrictions on sharing high definition DVD content. Digg, a popular website for
aggregating users' website recommendations, received a cease-and-desist
letter from the Advanced Access Content System Licensing Authority and the
MPAA demanding that Digg take down links to sites with the 09F9 key. Users
immediately revolted, repeatedly posting the key to the front page of the site
(Felten 2007b). The key was also posted to other sites in numerous forms,
including on t-shirts and as songs (Felten 2007a). Digg founder Kevin Rose
capitulated but, as in the case of the DeCSS code, the 09F9 key remains
available.

Net Neutrality
Unlike in the case of the Grey Album, DeCSS code, and the 09F9 key, the
campaign around Net Neutrality is long-running and ongoing. Currently, the
Internet has been designed so that most of the processing involved in the
network is done by computers accessing and (re)transmitting information, rather
than by the infrastructure at the heart of the network, and all packets of
information are treated equally. Those in favour of Net Neutrality argue that this
model should be protected, and that ISPs should not be allowed to prioritise
some users' traffic over others'. Their opponents argue that it should be up to
ISPs to decide what kind of service to provide, and that the government should
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not restrict innovation by regulating the Internet (NETCompetition.org Q&A).

There have been a number of important legislative moments in this debate,
including

the

2002

US

Federal

Communications

Commission

(FCC)

classification of Internet services as information services, meaning that certain

non-discrimination requirements would not apply to cable Internet services
(Esbin 2008, 1), and the 2006 inclusion of the Net Neutrality concept by the
FCC in the agreement that allowed AT&T to buy BellSouth (Public Knowledge
2008). Each of these moments have been accompanied by significant lobbying
by both opponents and proponents of Net Neutrality.
There are a number of groups working on the Net Neutrality campaign at the
moment, and there has also been significant activism by individual Internet
users. Public Knowledge is involved in activism around the Net Neutrality issue,
as well as in copyright activism. Their involvement includes providing a list of
relevant US legislation, including draft bills, listing important court cases
underway, assisting in such court cases through amicus briefs, providing
campaign material (such as information sheets and press releases), and filing
briefs (Public Knowledge 2008). The Save the Internet coalition engages in
similar activities, and their website encourages visitors to donate, sign petitions,
call members of Congress, and spread awareness (Save the Internet 2008).
The Open Internet Coalition engages in lobbying, issues press releases, and
provides educational resources for site visitors (Open Internet Coalition 2008). A
wide variety of others have also been involved. The Ask A Ninja website, for
example, produced a popular video in 2006 that (roughly) explained the concept
of Net Neutrality, and encouraged viewers to visit the Save the Internet website
to find out more and get involved. Both the formal lobbying and more informal
grassroots organising and awareness-raising have played important parts in this
ongoing campaign, and seem to have achieved some success. In September
2009, President Obama's appointee to the chair of the FCC, Julius
Genachowski, announced that legislative steps needed to be taken to preserve
the open nature of the Internet (Genachowski 2009). The principles outlined by
Genachowski, and his appointment itself, are promising signs for Net Neutrality
activists.

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Anti-Clean Feed activism in Australia

In mid-2008, the Australian federal government declared that it was looking for
ways to make the Internet safer, particularly for children (Conroy 2008),
delivering on pre-election promises to take the lead on cyber-safety (Electronic
Frontiers Australia 2008). Although the details were unclear at that stage, initial
trials of a filtering system by the Australian Communications and Media
Authority covered material that was inappropriate, as well as illegal. Activism
around the issue began swiftly, with a number of organisations and individuals
joining the fray.

Activism against an Australian Clean Feed took a variety of forms. Established

civil

liberties

groups,

particularly

Electronic

Frontiers Australia,

which

established the No Clean Feed campaign. The website for this campaign
encourages visitors to contact the Minister for Broadband, Communications and
the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy, as well as to contact other
Members of Parliament and ISPs. The website also urges visitors to sign a
petition. Other organisations have engaged in similar protests, including
Australians Against Internet Censorship, which offers guides to letter-writing and
petitions as well as links to protests, t-shirts, posters and flyers. More
unconventional tactics have also been used, including NetAlarmed's satirical
site, the creation of two Twitter feeds, the defacement of the Federal
Government Classification Board's website (Moses 2009), and the creation of
the Digital Liberty Coalition, which aims to oppose the Clean Feed through the
use of direct action and guerrilla marketing (Digital Liberty Coalition 2009). A
number of Australian and international bloggers have also written about the feed
and posted buttons protesting it on their sites.

While the activism around the Clean Feed has certainly played a role in raising
the profile of the issue, problems with implementation may ultimately end up
being the deciding factor in scuppering the idea. Targeted content has come
under repeated criticism, as the Clean Feed blacklist has at various times
included a dentist's website, photography by artist Bill Henson, pro-euthanasia
websites, and anti-abortion websites (Moses 2009). There are also technical
issues with the plan, including doubts as to whether it could effectively target
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the most egregious material and whether implementation of the plan would
degrade performance for Australian Internet users (Electronic Frontiers Australia
2009). There are now signs that Senator Conroy is backing down on the plan,
including his recent statement that if it is implemented it may be voluntary
(Colley 2009).

Pirate Bay trial

In February 2009, Swedish prosecutors filed charges against four people
involved in The Pirate Bay: Gottfrid Svarthold Warg, Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij,
and Carl Lundstrm. The four were charged with promoting other people's
infringements of copyright laws (Kravets 2008), as The Pirate Bay website
makes links available to torrent files of copyrighted material. Some of the
charges laid against the defendants were dropped swiftly, but in April 2009 they
were found guilty of the remainder of the charges and sentenced to one year in
jail and a total of SEK30 million, or around AU$4.8 million, in fines. Both the
defendants and the prosecutors appealed the verdict, and these appeals are
currently being processed.
Activism around the trial has been so intense that many commentators have
called the initial guilty verdict a Pyrrhic victory (Kiss 2009; Thompson 2009). The
most notable demonstration of support has been the increase in support for the
Swedish Piratpartiet, which has 49,841 members at the time of writing
(Piratepartiet 2009), up from around 15,000 before the trial began (Sjoden
2009). While the Pirate Bay and the Piratpartiet have no official relationship, the
Piratpartiet was at the time the only political party taking a strong stance on
filesharing. The increased support for the Piratpartiet in the wake of the Pirate
Bay trial enabled the party to win their first seat in the European Parliament in
the 2009 elections. There were also other manifestations of support, including
distributed denial of service28 attacks on the website of the International
Federation of the Phonographic Industry, which supported the trial, and a pizza
delivery attack (multiple pizza delivery orders) on their headquarters (illunatic
2009; Leyden 2009). Hundreds of people protested in cities around Sweden
28

Distributed denial of service attacks are repeated attempts to access a website from multiple
computers at the same time, which overwhelms the server and temporarily shuts down the
website.

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against the guilty verdict (Nordstrom 2009). Information on other forms of

protest against the trial is being collected on The Pirate Bay's blog, including
calls for people to return all their music and videos to companies and promise
not to buy any more (Kopimi 2009). As well as failing to slow either the Pirate
Bay or filesharing more generally, this trial served to increase activism around
the issue.

Common themes
The focus in each of these cases has largely been on IP law and the
technological means of enforcing it. Activism is also emerging around issues of
surveillance and censorship, not only in the cases discussed here but also in
the UK, Denmark, Sweden, Iran, China, and other countries. However, the
struggles mentioned here have played a particularly emblematic or formative
role. DeCSS was one of the first widespread revolts against DRM, and in
combination with the 09F9 protests and Grey Tuesday illustrates one of the
movement's primary tactics: the use of the Internet and peer-to-peer networks
to ensure access to information, often illegally. The analysis and dissemination
of material on Diebold Election machines not only provided a clear connection
with the mechanisms of democracy, but also demonstrated the potentially
stifling effects of the DMCA. Eldred vs. Ashcroft has been a rallying-point for
free culture groups around the world. The Australian campaign against the
Clean Feed and the Swedish Pirate Bay trial have both showed emerging nonUS loci of activism. The benefits of the Swedish trial for the Piratpartiet have
pointed to emerging links between the DLM and conventional politics, as
happened with the environmental movement and Greens parties in previous
decades. Finally, the issue of Net Neutrality may be the most important in
determining the future of the Internet. Analysis of these struggles allows us to
draw out some common threads which tell as more about the DLM as a whole.
Most of the above-mentioned protests have attempted to highlight the political
aspects of an issue previously conceived of as primarily technical in nature. In
the case of the 09F9 revolt, Edward Felten notes that people participated in part
as a reaction to what they saw as censorship, a concept which a decade ago
may have seen as absurd when applied to a number (Felten 2007b). On the
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DeCSS gallery, the issue of access to the code is framed in terms of freedom of
speech, with the curator writing that the gallery was put together in order to
highlight the absurdity of Judge Kaplan's position that source code can be
legally differentiated from other forms of written expression (Touretzky 2000).
Similarly, activists involved in Grey Tuesday framed their protest in terms of
protecting freedom of speechpreventing the censorship associated with
DMCA takedown notices, as well as freedom to cut and paste existing cultural
content into new messages (Downhill Battle 2008). In the case of the Diebold
machines, activists took what was considered to be an uncontroversial upgrade
to voting procedures and turned it into a debate about citizen oversight into the
voting system. Lessig (2004) spends much of his analysis of Eldred vs. Ashcroft
lamenting his approach to the case, arguing that his focus on the US
Constitution's provision for limited terms of copyright lost the case, where a
clearer focus on the political harms done by copyright extension (which he
believed were obvious) would have been more effective. Finally, Net Neutrality
activists continually highlight the political aspects of the Internet's structure; the
Save the Internet coalition argue that an open and non-discriminatory structure
is the reason why the Internet has driven economic innovation, democratic
participation, and free speech online (Save the Internet 2008). Together, these
protests and campaigns have been part of the DLM's attempt to understand,
publicise, and shape the political effects of information technology.
These cases also highlight the value placed within the movement on the
contributions of amateurs and the need to protect access to ICTs for those with
relatively few resources. In the case of Eldred vs. Ashcroft, digital liberties
activists were fighting for the right of those outside large content industries to
publish and build on the stock of work that composes our culture. Those who
participated in Grey Tuesday were arguing that amateurs and musicians
working outside the bounds of big record labels needed to be able to draw on
samples of other music in order to create remixes, mashups, and other new
work. Finally, the fight for Net Neutrality emphasises the importance of equal
access for all to the Internet, including those without the resources to pay for
higher visibility or quicker load-times for their web pages. A vital part of the
DLM's work is the attempt to preserve spaces and resources for amateurs and
others with limited resources to make their voicesand musicheard.
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The ways in which the DLM carries out this work is frequently surprising.
Analysis of these protests also reveals an unexpected development in the
movement's contentious repertoire. The movement's gestation through
websites, the technical skills of many participants, and the orientation towards
online activities would suggest the adoption of hacktivism of the sort described
by Jordan and Taylor (2004) and Wray (1998) as a key tactic, but this has not,
on the whole, eventuated. Instead, many of the movement's most visible
protests have predominantly taken place through the authorised channels for
democratic dissent. Many of the above-mentioned struggles have involved
lawsuits, and in the case of the more protracted campaign over Net Neutrality,
visitors to the Save the Internet website are urged to call their members of
Congress. The focus on institutionalised dissent is not particular to the protests
and campaigns mentioned here; regular calls to action on Boingboing, for
example, request that Boingboing readers contact their local representatives
(Doctorow 2009a, Doctorow 2009b). Similarly, the EFF, FFII, and Public
Knowledge are all involved in lobbying and lawsuits, rather than direct action.
As with all social movements, the DLM encompasses actors that engage in both
institutionalised and more radical forms of dissent.
DLM participants do take part in a number of protests and direct actions,
although these do not always take forms that would be familiar to scholars of
social movements. On the more familiar end of the spectrum, there have been a
number of marches and protests, although these have tended to gain little
attention in the media and have not garnered significant participation. Less
recognisable is the ongoing mass campaign of civil disobedience, in which
movement participants break copyright, share files, remix cultural content, and
modify their hardware or software in order to sidestep restrictions on the uses to
which it can be put. Outside of the movement, these activities are rarely
understood as civil disobedience, in part because they do not follow the model
of recognised forms of civil disobedience, such as Rosa Parks' refusal to move
to the coloured section of the bus or the Gandhian satyagraha that was central
to the Indian Independence struggle. However different filesharing or posting a
few numbers and letters to a site may appear to be from the protests of the

146

American civil rights movement and the Gandhian satyagrahis, it is clear that it
can be (and is) understood as a new incarnation of this familiar tactic.
Many of those who engaged in the 09F9 revolt and other movement protests
clearly vocalised their moral objections to the laws concerned, and framed their
activities in terms of civil disobedience. Felten writes that in addition to the
desire to resist censorship, Digg users posted the 09F9 key because Giving a
private party ownership of a number seems deeply wrong to people versed in
mathematics and computer science (Felten 2007c). Kembrew McLeod, an
academic-activist who took part in Grey Tuesday, writes that he engaged in this
act of copyright civil disobedience in order to promote dialogue on these issues
(2005, 80). Some of those involved in filesharing also situate their activities
within the framework of civil disobedience, as commenter mb_webguy does
on The Pirate Bay's blog:
Some call use "pirates", but we're not villains. We simply recognize that
communication is natural, and that information cannot be contained. We
may be criminals, but only in the light of unjust laws. We continue to act
according to our consciences in civil disobedience of these unjust laws,
in the tradition of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., until the day that
our governments see the futility and foolishness of intellectual property
laws. Vive le rsistance! Vive le Pirate Bay! (mb_webguy 2009).
No doubt many would dispute this argument, noting important differences
between filesharing and more familiar forms of civil disobedience, including the
frequent anonymity of filesharers. Nevertheless, claims by users that they are
engaging in civil disobedience, and the debates that frequently follow, are part
of the process of adapting civil disobedience to the use of new technologies,
and developing a wider understanding of what the DLM is and how it will pursue
its goals.
The array of different strategies, tactics, individuals and organisations involved
in these struggles is a concrete illustration of the diversity of the DLM. All social
movements are made up of actors with differing affiliations, ideologies, and
contentious repertoires. This is no less true of the DLM, which is made up of
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communists, anarchists, libertarians, and a number of participants who would

be reluctant to identify with any political ideology at all. However, there are a
number of recurring themes and frames within the movement. On the one hand,
many of these struggles place a high premium on the freedom of the individual,
either conceived in terms of freedom to tinker with the technologies of everyday
life (as in the case of the DeCSS and 09F9 codes) or in terms of freedom from
government surveillance and censorship. This theme owes much to the
movement's roots in hacker culture, with its fierce individualism. On the other
hand, the DLM does not entirely eschew collective solutions. The movement
makes repeated claims on the state, including demands that the state hold to
the promises of liberal democracy and calls for protection from the power of
corporations (as in the case of the struggle over Net Neutrality). Many activists
are also involved in building projects that have echoes of collectivism, including
F/LOSS and books, music, and even films licensed under creative commons
licences. The complexities of the DLM's ideological positioning, and the
implications of this positioning for its involvement in and relationship with the
global justice movement, will be discussed in more detail in the following
chapter.

Conclusion
The matter of the DLM's emerging network structure, collective identity, and
contentious repertoire have been discussed at length here in order to clearly
position the movement within the context of social movement scholarship.
Researchers have been relatively quick to recognise shifts towards the use of
new technologies and online spaces by traditional social movements, and even
to posit a move towards a new way of organising and acting. Work on the
Zapatistas has been a catalyst for this; both Cleaver's (1999) paper on
'Computer-Linked Social Movements and the Global Threat to Capitalism' and
Arquilla and Ronfeldt's (2001) Networks and Netwars have been influential
studies that cite the Zapatistas as a turning-point in the area. However, as
Froehling argues, the Zapatistas are in many ways similar to previous social
movements, and use of the Internet was at least at first confined to their
supporters (1999). The emergence of social movements that organise
predominantly through the use of ICTs, and that address issues related to new
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technologies, is a phenomenon that movement scholars have proved less wellequipped to deal with.
This movement will prove to be an important one in coming years, and the
issues that it addresses will have effects on the work of other social movements
throughout the world. The DLM is struggling to retain user control over the
devices and networks that allow widespread communication and rapid access
and dissemination of information. They are also working to (re)establish the
legitimacy of the amateur as a producer of knowledge in the face of elite
attempts to undermine the growth of amateur content production. At the heart of
their work is a continual questioning of claims that technology is apolitical, and a
commitment to highlighting the effects of new technologies on democracy. While
the movement is increasingly linking issues of user control of technology with
critiques of corporate and government power, the movement's development of
an overarching frame to link these concepts will be vital in coming years. This
aspect of the movement's work remains underdeveloped.
The next chapter will examine some of the resonances between the DLM and
the Indian movement discussed in Chapter Two. Each is concerned with user
control over the technologies of everyday life, grassroots access to knowledge,
and the legitimation of the grassroots/amateurs as producers of knowledge. At
the same time, there are some strong barriers to communication between these
movements, and indeed between the DLM and many other movements in the
global justice movement. There is evidence that the DLM, or at least sections of
it, overlaps with the global justice movement, but this overlap is currently small
and uncertain. Understanding the relationship between the DLM, the Indian
movement against GM crops, and the GJM gives an insight into some of the
reasons why struggles over knowledge are so vital to the GJM's work.

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Chapter Four
The global justice movement and struggles over
knowledge
Introduction
This chapter synthesises analyses of the DLM and the Indian movement
opposing GM crops in the context of their contributions to the GJM's struggle for
globalisation from below. In the first chapter I argued that knowledge is an
important site of political contestation, and that struggles over knowledge are
vital to the GJM. The following chapters examined two such movements,
arguing that each is involved in struggles to control particular technologies and
redefine knowledge. In many cases, these struggles serve as the focus of the
movements concerned, as for example in the case of the Indian anti-GM crop
movement's attempts to promote the value of traditional agricultural practices.
At the same time, such struggles frequently reinforce the position of movement
activists: promoting traditional agriculture improves the position of activists as
producers of knowledge relative to scientific or political elites. This chapter looks
at the contributions that both movements are making to the GJM's attempts to
build globalisation from below, including points of agreement and areas in which
there are disjunctures.
In the first section of this chapter I argue that both the DLM and the Indian
opposition to GM crops have a complex relationship to the global web of
activism. While the Indian movement has come to play an emblematic role
within the GJM, Indian activists' ability to build connections with other groups
and movements throughout the world has been hampered by limited resources,
and by organisational forms in which leaders retain control of international
communications. In contrast, the DLM has a relatively open structure and most
members have access to the resources necessary to build connections at the
local and international level. Despite this, the overlap between the DLM and the
GJM remains limited, and digital liberties activists have not attained a high level
of visibility within the GJM. Few studies highlight the difficulty of drawing
boundaries around social movements, and the question of boundaries and
150

movement membership remains under-examined within social movement

scholarship. These examples highlight the difficulty of definitively mapping the
borders of movements, particularly the GJM. Nevertheless, while claims that
either the Indian opposition to GM crops or the DLM are contained within the
GJM are problematic, there are reasonable grounds for seeing both case-study
movements as partially overlapping with the GJM.
The most important argument put forward in this chapter is that despite the
limitations on each movement's connection with the GJM, both the DLM and the
Indian opposition to GM are making vital contributions to the GJM. The second
section outlines four important respects in which both the DLM and the Indian
opposition to GM crops are contributing to the work of the GJM. The first of
these is their contribution to establishing the validity of grassroots, situated, and
peer-based knowledge systems. Secondly, both of the case-study movements
discussed in previous chapters are working to preserve diversity in the face of
homogenising forces. This provides support to the attempt to build the one
world with room for many worlds imagined by GJM activists. Thirdly, both of
these movements are working against the privatisation of the commons. Again,
the ideological function that this serves is supportive of the project of building
globalisation from below, while in practical terms it means that vital resources
remain accessible. Fourthly, each movement is helping to gain or retain
democratic control over key technologies. These contributions are at the heart
of each movement's work and are, like many other struggles throughout the
world, vital to building globalisation from below. These case studies illustrate
important ways in which local struggles, or struggles over particular
technologies, feed into a larger, loosely-connected, effort, often in unexpected
and under-recognised ways. This discussion also illustrates the importance of
struggles over knowledge, giving concrete examples of the contributions that
such struggles make to the GJM.

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Section one: mapping the movements

Each of the movements discussed in preceding chapters has a complex
relationship to the broader GJM. Mapping these relationships is difficult, in large
part because of the inherently fluid and informal nature of social movements. In
the case of the GJM, attempts to map the movement are further complicated by
the range of issues and networks, and the geographical spread of the actors,
that constitute the movement. Few, if any, struggles, organisations, or activists
fit neatly within the borders of the GJM. Instead, the GJM is composed of many
overlapping actors and movements, most of which refuse easy categorisation.
Close examination of the DLM and Indian opposition to GM crops reveals many
points of connection, but it also reveals the problematic nature of any simplistic
positioning of either movement within, or in relation to, the GJM.

The Indian opposition to genetically modified crops and the

global justice movement
Claims that the Indian opposition to GM crops is part of the GJM are unlikely to
be controversial. While the movement does not have the same iconic place
within the GJM that the Zapatistas have attained, it is frequently cited in
movement publications and has a high level of visibility within the GJM. We Are
Everywhere (Notes from Nowhere 2003f), a publication written by GJM activists
to chronicle the movement's work, includes several references to the Indian
movement, including in discussions of Peoples' Global Action (de Marcellus
2003, 99), and of solidarity and sabotage as tactics (Notes from Nowhere
2003d, 456). Several of their struggles are also marked in the timeline of
moments of resistance and rebellion (cf. Notes from Nowhere 2003, 81 &
131). They are mentioned by Jos Bov, a French farmer and activist with a
prominent position in the GJM, as part of the growing network of international
solidarity between farmers (Bov 2004, 142). Patel cites the KRRS as amongst
those with dissenting voices and visions of agriculture (2007, 42), and the group
is described in an NGO account of La Via Campesina as providing some of the
earliest and largest displays of farmer opposition to neoliberal globalisation
(Desmarais 2003, 13). London activists discussing the KRRS also described it
as an organisation with its credentials in tact [sic] (Townes 1999). Mentions of
Vandana Shiva are also frequent within texts about the GJM, as is praise for her
work (cf. Bello 2004, 64; Starr 2006; Achbar & Abbott 2004). Groups and
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individuals from the Indian movement are certainly seen as belonging to the
GJM, and are often referred to as inspirational examples.
Many of the participants in the Indian movement also identify with the GJM. For
example, Chukki Nanjundaswamy, leader of one faction of the KRRS, said in
2006, [w]e feel that our voices have been part of the international antiglobalisation movement. And we feel that our views are the same and we have
a common enemy. Since our enemy has globalised, we must also globalise our
struggle (2006, pers. comm., Jan 19). Leo Saldanha, member of an Indian
NGO that has been involved in the opposition to GM crops, the Environment
Support Group, said,
I don't know if we are part of the left but I think certainly in most positions
we are taking we're anti-globalisation. Because the way we see
globalisation, it's also imperialist. [] See, the problem with globalisation
is that it's quite a right-sounding name, but when you look into what the
mechanisms of it are it works through consumerism, it works through
trade barriers, it works through taking control of resources [...] So they're
taking control away from the people, so we are for control which is
located locally, not in abstract, remote sense. Therefore I think we're also
anti-capitalist in that sense, that makes sense for anti-globalisation also
(2006 pers. comm., Jan 25).
This discussion also demonstrates an engagement with long-running debates
within and surrounding the GJM about the movement's orientation and goals.
In addition to identifying with the aims of the GJM, activists from the Indian antiGM movement have engaged in a number of events that serve as links with the
broader GJM. One of the most important of these was the Intercontinental
Caravan, which took place in May and June of 1999. This was an event in
which several bus-loads of farmers from the Global South travelled through
Europe and engaged in what one participant called perhaps the most ambitious
attempt yet to connect up different traditions of struggle, North and South
(Ainger 2003, 169). Participants included activists from the Bangladeshi
landless people's movement, human rights and environmental activists from
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Nepal, Zapatistas, Black community movement activists from Columbia,

Rainbow Keepers from Ukraine, and activists from Brazil and Chile (Assadi
2004, 210). During the Intercontinental Caravan, solidarity between the Indian
farmers' groups and European groups and movements was strengthened by
identifying common enemies, and taking part in actions and campaigns that
activists from both North and South could support (Featherstone 2003, 407).
The activists protested with local people against the world economic system,
gene technology, war and the nuclear threat, drawing these issues under the
banner of regain[ing] control over countries, communities and the future
colonised by transnationals (Assadi 2004, 210). The Intercontinental Caravan
was an important moment in the history of the Indian struggle against GM
crops, and it both required and reinforced connections between Indian activists
and those in other countries.
As well as participation in the Intercontinental Caravan, Indian anti-GM activists
have been involved in a range of significant GJM events. Vandana Shiva, the
most prominent internationally active member of the Indian opposition to GM
crops, spoke at the first WSF in 2001, the 2004 Mumbai WSF (and at Mumbai
Resistance, a parallel forum held at the same time), the 2007 WSF in Nairobi,
and at other world, regional, and local social forums. She has also participated
in other GJM events, such as the September 2000 protests against the World
Economic Forum Asia-Pacific Summit. Scoones notes that Vandana Shiva has
become one of the GJM's stars, used to provide a sense of occasion to an
otherwise average protest event, garnering publicity and media coverage along
the way (2008, 327). MD Nanjundaswamy played a similar role within the GJM,
albeit far more briefly. Over the course of the KRRS's adoption of a global
justice/anti-globalisation frame he increasingly moved in international activist
circles, and was revered as a southern farmer leader, a voice from the poor
and marginalized (Scoones 2008, 327). MD Nanjundaswamy and others within
the KRRS have also participated in a number of protests against international
financial institutions, including protests against the WTO in 1999 and 2001.
The KRRS's involvement in the WSF has been more complex. The KRRS was
part of the steering committee for the 2003 Social Forum to be held in Senegal,
but was not satisfied with the process or the direction in which the Forums were
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heading. In a series of letters between MD Nanjundaswamy and Bernard

Cassen of the Association for Taxation of Financial Transactions in Order to Aid
Citizens (ATTAC), MD Nanjundaswamy outlined several issues that the KRRS
had with the upcoming Forum, including dissatisfaction about the way in which
the ASF [Asian Social Forum] is being launched by NGOs little known to the
people of India (KRRS in Farrer 2004, 174). KRRS members also questioned
Cassen's objections to Fidel Castro's participation in the Forum:
[Cassen said] that Fidel Castros participation will split the global
movement. So, our demand from the organisers in Mumbai was that
Fidel Castro should inaugurate the World Social Forum because he is
the voice of the anti-globalisation movement at the international level and
if his participation splits the movement his absence would also split the
movement and the Indian farmers movement would not take part in the
WSF (C. Nanjundaswamy 2006, pers. comm., Jan 19).
Members of the KRRS subsequently split from the WSF process. When the
2004 WSF was held in Mumbai, the KRRS was involved in organising a parallel
forum called Mumbai Resistance (C. Nanjundaswamy 2006, pers. comm., Jan
19). These debates and splits do not necessarily imply a split from the GJM, but
rather different tendencies within it.
The Indian movement has also been heavily involved in several international
coalitions and networks that are central to the GJM. The KRRS is a member of
Via Campesina, an international movement of peasants, small- and mediumsized producers, landless, rural women, indigenous people, rural youth and
agricultural workers (Via Campesina 2009) that is central to the GJM. Via
Campesina was formed in 1993, and was intended to form a bridge between
Northern and Southern peasants and farmers. It has held numerous protests
and conferences throughout the world, including many that directly targeted
global financial institutions such as the WTO (Desmarais 2003). Involvement in
PGA has also been important to the KRRS. PGA, an outcome of a Zapatistainspired 'Encuentro' in Spain in 1997 (Townes 1999), has focused on
coordinating Global Action Days in response to neoliberal globalisation, taking
the form of decentralised protests surrounding meetings of international
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financial institutions (Peoples' Global Action 2007). PGA's second conference

was held in Bangalore, with significant involvement by the KRRS. The KRRS
were also represented at the PGA's first conference in 1998, with one
participant describing MD Nanjundaswamy's speeches around Switzerland as
inspiring radical anti-WTO groups to spring up in his wake (de Marcellus 2003,
99). The KRRS's involvement in these networks is a manifestation of their
involvement in the broader GJM.
In analysing social movements, there is a tendency to default to discussing
NGOs and other organisations, which are more visible and more readily
mapped than the fluid chaos that constitutes the full range of social movement
participation. Similarly, it is relatively easy to use the KRRS as a stand-in for the
Indian opposition to GM crops as a whole. However, the overlap is not
complete. As noted in Chapter Two, some members of the KRRS are not
opposed to GM crops, or at least are not opposed to all GM crops. Many others
are opposed in theory, but do not in practice take part in anti-GM crop activism,
or activism promoting organic and traditional farming. There are also many
participants in the Indian opposition to GM crops who are not members of the
KRRS or other large organisations, but who nevertheless play a role in building
and maintaining links with other parts of the GJM. These efforts are often limited
by a lack of access to the resources associated with NGOs, but they
nevertheless play a role in integrating activism on a local scale with international
networks of resistance.
The Indian movement is integrated with the GJM through a wide variety of
alliances and communications, through Indian activists' self-identifications and
through other activists' perceptions of the Indian movement. However, it is
useful to question the straightforward claim that the Indian movement is part of
the GJM. Membership of any social movement is fluid and often indeterminate.
It is most easily mapped by looking at movement organisations, and at
snapshots of particular movement events. A comprehensive analysis of social
movements needs to look beyond these moments of clarity and encompass the
uncertainties and contradictions that are inherent to social movements. While
the previous discussion supports claims that the Indian opposition to GM crops
is tightly interlinked with the GJM, there are also a number of important
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disjunctures between the Indian movement and the GJM, and there are
significant limitations to the extent to which the Indian movements can network
internationally.
Research into transnational social movements and related transnational
networks recognises the difficulties involved in cross-border organisation. For
example, Bandy and Smith recognise the substantial obstacles to building and
maintaining networks of activism across gaps in power, wealth, ideology,
culture, strategic interests, and organizational forms (2000, 231). Attempts to
build transnational coalitions are also, Bandy and Smith (2000, 233) argue,
more likely to succeed when they include NGO participation from the North, as
these NGOs have significantly greater access to resources such as specialised
knowledge, financial resources, and organisational capacity. Bandy and Smith
(2000, 241) also draw on the work of McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly (2001) in noting
the crucial role of brokers in developing and sustaining cross-border coalitions.
Both the need for access to resources and the crucial role of brokers play
important roles in limiting the extent of connections between the Indian anti-GM
movement and the GJM.
The first limitation is that of resources. The constituent-base claimed for the
Indian opposition to GM crops, and particularly of the KRRS, is predominantly
made up of relatively poor farmers. When it comes to travel and involvement in
international events, participants are limited not only by their lack of money, but
also by other factors such as the difficulty of obtaining visas (Ainger 2003, 165;
Featherstone 2003, 412)29. In one account of a protest against GM crops held in
Bangalore, even the train fare from the rural areas to Bangalore is seen as
potentially problematic, a cost that the KRRS must pay to ensure or induce
attendance (Biewen 2000). Attendance at international protests against the
WTO and other international financial institutions, and at world or even regional
social forums are well out of the reach of most movement participants.
Resource constraints also feed into and magnify other obstacles to direct
engagement with transnational activism. Language is an enormous barrier;
29

Ironically, insofar as participants were able to surmount financial obstacles in order to attend
events, this is seen by some to detract from claims that they are truly a mass movement for
poor farmers (cf. D'Monte 2000).

157

even within India, the number of different languages spoken inhibits the ability
to form national movements, although this is to an extent eased by the number
of people who speak several languages as well as their first language. During
my fieldwork, I encountered few movement participants who spoke and read
English other than urban, middle-class professionals, many of whom were
working for NGOs rather than in the less organised sections of the movement 30.
Language barriers do not only inhibit direct communication between activists,
they also limit the ability of movement participants to present their viewpoints
and access information in international media, including online.
The role of brokers is vital in sustaining international connections. Effectively,
movement leaders often become the only movement participants who are
capable of making and sustaining cross-border linkages. In the international
sphere, the only activists to have garnered significant visibility are the late MD
Nanjundaswamy and Vandana Shiva, although others (including Suman Sahai
and Devinder Sharma) have had moments in the spotlight. These leaders
become the nodes that connect different groups and movements. As one KRRS
member said, in terms of designing the global movement, for example,
Professor Nanjundaswamy was the founder of Via Campesina in India, and he
brought together many farmers' movements in the Asian countries, and he
initiated the Via Campesina in Asia (Chandrashekar 2006, pers. comm., Feb
4). While this description undoubtedly glosses over the contributions of many
other members, it does highlight MD Nanjundaswamy's importance in building
and maintaining those connections. The highly personalised nature of these
connections increases their fragility, as was seen during the organisation of the
Intercontinental Caravan when Shiva and Nanjundaswamy entered into an
acrimonious debate about the venture (Featherstone 2003, 413). The KRRS's
split added to this. With the split into the Nanjundaswamy and Puttanaiah
factions, there was a deep division between those focusing on local issues and
those who saw these issues as part of global problems (Assadi 2004, 210), with
the Puttanaiah faction predominantly focusing on the local sphere. This meant
that when MD Nanjundaswamy died in 2004, the KRRS's involvement in
transnational coalitions and protests tapered off, as well as its role in the Indian
anti-GM struggle (Raghunandan 2006, pers. comm., Feb 7). Nanjundaswamy's
30

I do not mean to privilege English as the language of activism, but it is the international
language most likely to be spoken by Indian activists.

158

daughter, Chukki Nanjundaswamy, took the reins of the Nanjundaswamy

section of the KRRS after his death, and at the time that I interviewed her she
remained the only one within the organisation with regular access to the Internet
(C. Nanjundaswamy 2006, pers. comm., Jan 19). As long as international
connections continued to be channeled through one or two movement leaders
in this way, they are likely to remain fragile, easily broken by the incapacitation
of movement leaders or personal disagreements.
Finally, it should be noted that as well as resource limitations, the frames
deployed by Indian anti-GM activists have contradictory effects. In many cases,
the movement's framing of their issues serves to reinforce their links with other
movements in the Global South, and with the GJM as a whole. As we saw in
Chapter Two, since the 1990s the KRRS and other groups that constitute the
movement have framed their struggle as part of the broader opposition to
neoliberalism. Even those activists whose focus is on local projects and
preservation of indigenous farming techniques frequently refer back to global
movements. The opposition to globalisation has, however, been framed in a
uniquely Indian manner. As previously discussed, the Indian opposition to
GMOs has frequently called upon the discourse of swadeshi, the Gandhian
notion of village-level self-reliance. This framing does not necessarily contradict
a master frame of opposition to neoliberalism. Rather, it positions the
exploitation of Indian farmers as part of a new era of globalisation, in which
national resources, production, and consumption are all controlled by
multinational corporations (Assadi 2004, 206). This frame fits neatly within the
rhetoric of the GJM, emphasising the importance of the local in the face of
neoliberal globalisation.
At times, however, this tendency towards nationalism has worked to exclude
others and alienate Indian activists from others within the GJM. This was
particularly the case during the Intercontinental Caravan, possibly one of the
few times in which movement activists other than leaders well-versed in the
language and ideals of the GJM interacted in an unstructured way with
European activists and others from the Global South. One account describes an
Indian activist approvingly discussing the links between Hitler's nationalism and
Hindu tradition:
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On the very first day, an Indian guy got up and started talking about how
wonderful Hitler was...how the swastika symbolises a maize mill which
functions by getting rid of the bad parts of the maize and keeping the
good parts...Hitler defended the German nation state when it was in
crisis, by getting rid of the problem elements, and now India has to do the
same (Do or Die 1999)
Featherstone (2003, 414) also mentions opposition from members of the Indian
delegation to Nepalese participants speaking at events, claiming that it was an
Indian not a Nepalese Caravan. Mahendra Singh Tikait, a farmers' leader from
the North of India, was also accused of imperialism by Nepalese participants
(Madsen 2001, 3741). While incidents such as these are by no means the rule,
they do undermine claims to a unitary solidarity between Indian activists and
movements of the oppressed from other parts of the world.
Framing the opposition to GM crops within a nationalist discourse facilitates and
contributes to the already problematic relationship between local movements
and international activism. For a range of movements in the Global South,
including feminist and environmental movements, links with international
organisations and movements are attacked by critics. This is particularly the
case when it comes to links with organisations and movements from the Global
North. One journalist covering agricultural issues, Harishchandra Bhat, noted
that there are people who blame them [farmers' and anti-dam movements] [...]
and say that these people are foreign-funded, funded by foreign agencies to
prevent development in India (2006, pers. comm., Feb 28). This is an issue
that movement leaders and NGO members are aware of. Some international
organisations avoid approaching local groups with funding in order to avoid
such accusations, and movement leaders often take care to emphasise their
grounding in local communities and concerns. While these issues do not
preclude involvement of local movements in the GJM, they do complicate the
process and provide additional difficulties that must be navigated.
The point of this examination of the Indian movement's involvement with the
GJM is to complicate the image of the GJM as having a strong and unified core
160

membership and a less well-integrated periphery of other participants. Even

those movements which are assumed to be at the centre of the GJM, as the
Indian movement is, are not fully integrated with the movement. They are not
contained within the GJM, but rather overlap with it. Their struggle is at times
explicitly positioned as part of the GJM, but more often activists are addressing
issues with a local focus. Nevertheless, as we will see in the following section,
these movements make vital contributions to the GJM. This is possible
because, as we saw in Chapter One, the GJM is by its very nature constituted
from diverse and decentralised struggles on a wide range of issues and in many
different parts of the world.

The digital liberties movement and the global justice movement

Activists within the DLM do not face the same resource constraints as Indian
anti-GM activists. By definition, they have access to the Internet. Many of them
are highly educated, well-paid, and mobile. If anyone exists in the space of
flows (Castells 2005), it is them. Yet, in contrast to the Indian movement, links
between the DLM and the GJM are few and far between. Again, it is difficult to
quantify this exactly given the blurry nature of social movements and the
problems with clearly delineating their boundaries. The difficulty is compounded
by the ephemeral nature of connections between movements. Personal
communications, fleeting involvement in joint actions, references in movement
texts and other such linkages are easily overlooked. Absences are hard to map,
but there are at least some signs of this absence of connection between the two
realms of activism. Movement texts from the GJM tend to make scant reference
to F/LOSS, online civil liberties, file sharing, and other issues dear to the DLM.
When they do mention digital liberties activism and issues, it is usually within a
discussion of hacktivism as a tactic (cf. Starr 2006, 77-78; Jordan & Taylor
2004). Participation of digital liberties activists in GJM events is also limited,
although again this is difficult to prove conclusively. This claim is predominantly
based on my experience of the Nairobi and Pakistan WSF, as well as the lack of
information on activists and groups from the DLM in accounts of GJM events.
Omission of these movements may, however, be due to a reporting bias. There
is a possibility that activists from other movements and scholars who are writing
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about the GJM do not see the issues addressed by the DLM as important, or do
not have the conceptual framework to recognise digital liberties activism. For
example, F/LOSS activists set up computers with Linux for the Nairobi WSF
(Tectonic 2007), yet this is omitted from most accounts of the Nairobi WSF.
Articles on the top two activist websites provided when a Google search is
carried out for coverage of the Nairobi WSF, Globalise Resistance (2009) and
Choike (2009), make no mention of Linux. There is some support for the thesis
that activists do not necessarily see digital liberties issues as important in
discussions of the use of free software at the Mumbai WSF:
For some IWC [Indian Working Committee] and IOC [Indian Organising
Committee] members the knowledge management software used was of
marginal interest. Some viewed FS [Free Software] as a way to claim
self-reliance against mega-corporations but they still saw it as a
technical issue (Juris, Caruso & Mosca 2008, 102).
Given such attitudes, it is unsurprising that F/LOSS and related digital liberties
activists' involvement may be under-reported in activist coverage of GJM
events. Similarly, while there has been some academic analysis of the use of
F/LOSS at various WSFs (cf. Smith & Smythe 2008; Juris, Caruso & Mosca
2008), this work remains at the periphery of the discipline. Lack of interest on
the part of GJM activists and academics working in the area, as well as their
ignorance of digital liberties activism, must therefore be taken into account in
analysing the DLM's relationship with the GJM.
Some academic research does exist that links the DLM with global justice
activism, although the links found are weak. Starr's (2006) research is notable
here. In mapping connections between anti-corporate movements, Starr notes
that the cyberpunk movement is one of the few which shares only limited
connections with other movements (2006, 161). The cyberpunk movement,
which she locates as centred around the ideas contained in early 1980s
cyberpunk novels, is shown to have an emerging connection with peace and
human rights movements, a weak link with anarchist movements, and a strong
link with Zapatismo (2006, 73 & 160). Given the centrality of the Zapatistas to
the GJM, the strong link between the cyberpunk movement and Zapatismo
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would seem to imply at least the possibility of a growing connection between the
cyberpunk movement and the GJM. However, Starr's research does not provide
enough information to adequately map the movements' relationships with each
other, because she has defined a connection as a public embrace of each
other's ideology and/or projects (2006, 161). A connection between movements
as defined here does not necessarily imply communication, organisational links,
or involvement in common projects. While Starr's work provides a valuable
starting-point, these issues and the lack of information as to which groups are
involved in the cyberpunk movement make it impossible to define the extent to
which the digital liberties and cyberpunk movements overlap.
There are two different starting points for examining the apparent gulf between
the DLM and the GJM. The first of these is to take it as unproblematic, to
assume that there is no reason for these movements to be connected, and the
gulf between them therefore requires no explanation. The second starting-point,
which I will take as the basis of the following discussion, assumes that this gulf
does require an explanation. In a world where social movements are
increasingly cooperating and communicating across borders, isolation is the
exception rather than the norm. Participants in the DLM have access to
significant resources, and are in a strong position to know about the work of the
GJM. Further, as discussed below, many of the values central to the DLM are
shared by the GJM, including a commitment to diversity, decentralised power,
and direct democracy, and an opposition to excessive corporate power and the
enclosure of the commons. Given this, the reasons for the lack of integration
between the GJM and the DLM is worthy of analysis.
The first and most obvious reason is the relative youth of the DLM. As
discussed in Chapter Three, the DLM has emerged relatively recently. Its oldest
direct antecedents, hackers and Yippies, are only a few decades old, and the
sense of a cohesive and unified DLM is still developing. Without this, and
lacking a clear collective identity, it may be difficult for movement participants to
see the necessity, or possibility, of creating strategic alliances with other social
movements. Similarly, the lack of visibility associated with the youth of the DLM
inhibits participants in other movements from seeking alliances. However, these
factors cannot fully explain the relative isolation of the DLM: there is sufficient
163

self-awareness within the movement and sufficient access to resources to

expect a greater degree of networking and cross-movement integration to have
occurred by now. Further, the GJM itself has only emerged over the last two or
three decades, and other movements have successfully developed crossmovement links in this time.
Arguably, the reason that the DLM has remained relatively isolated from the
global web of activism that constitutes the GJM is the dominance of frames and
ideology within the DLM that do not mesh well with those of the GJM. While the
GJM is constituted of participants with a broad range of ideological affiliations, it
is dominated by those with left-wing anarchist and socialist tendencies. Activists
within the movement show a consistent hostility towards the valorisation of the
market as the primary mechanism for the allocation of resources, and towards
the associated growth in corporate power. This tendency is exemplified in many
of epithets applied to the movement by both activists and scholars, including
anti-corporate (Starr 2006; Juris 2005) and anti-capitalist (Callinicos 2003).
One of the main tensions within the GJM, evident at WSFs and in many internal
movement debates, is between activists with centralist tendencies and those
who eschew formal and hierarchical structures (Farrer 2004). Debate over the
power of capital, on the other hand, is limited. While individuals and
organisations within the movement may differ in the extent to which they
advocate reform of or revolution against capitalism, resistance to the power of
corporations and to the use of the market as the primary mechanism for
allocating resources is taken for granted within the GJM.
In contrast to this, participants within the DLM are frequently reluctant to
associate their work with leftist projects. While participants in the DLM have on
occasion been described as communists and/or socialists (Kelly 2009; Stallman
2008; Himanen 2001), many within the movement have been quick to distance
themselves from these labels. Lawrence Lessig, one of the leading proponents
of creative commons licences and a key figure within the DLM, responded
immediately to Kevin Kelly's (2009) claims that digital culture was experiencing
a New Socialism. Lessig (2009) writes that none of the things that Kelly (and
I) celebrate about the Internet are 'socialist' because they are based on
freedom, rather than coercion. In the same piece, Lessig objects to Mark
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Helprin's Digital Barbarism (2009), complaining about the mushiness in

thinking involved in Helprin's incessant Red-baiting - the suggestion that the
movement of which I am a part is a kind of warmed over Marxism from the
1960s (Lessig 2009). While Richard Stallman, a prominent free software
advocate, does not object to the label with such vehemence, he does write,
[a]nyone who criticizes certain business practices can expect to be called
communist from time to time. This is a way of changing the subject and
evading the issue. If people believe the charges, they don't listen to what
the critics really say. (It is much easier to attack communism than to
attack the views of the free software movement.) (Stallman 2008).
These sentiments are representative of the mood within most of the movement,
which eschews left-wing and anti-capitalist ideologies.
Attempts to outline the DLM's politics are complicated by the expressed
disavowal of any political stand by many of those within the movement, which
should be seen more as a rejection of traditional political divisions than as
evidence of a true rejection of political projects. Leaders of the Swedish
piratpartiet, for example, explicitly argue that it is neither left- nor right-wing, and
that its members come from both sides of the political spectrum (Engstrm
2007, pers. comm., Jul 27), yet it is at the same time obviously engaged in a
political project. When it comes to F/LOSS advocates, Wayner writes,
[t]o some extent, the politics of the free and open source movement are
such a conundrum that people simply project their wishes onto it. John
Gilmore told me over dinner, Well, it depends. Eric Raymond is sort of a
libertarian but Richard Stallman is sort of a communist. I guess it's both.
The freedom makes it possible for people to mold the movement to be
what they want (2000, 140).
Anthropological research by Gabriella Coleman supports this. Coleman notes
that FOSS31 developers would suggest that it is unacceptable to claim that
FOSS has as one of its goals anti-globalization, or for that matter any political
31

Note that FOSS and F/LOSS refer to the same constellation of practices and software.

165

program (2004, 507). This insistence that all sides of the political spectrum are
represented, or that none are, is common within the movement.
Despite this insistence, there are a number of common themes that define the
politics of the DLM. The first of these is a resistance to the centralisation of
power, particularly within government but also in the hands of corporations. The
opposition to government power is exhibited in the repeated campaigns fought
by digital liberties activists to resist expansion of government powers and
surveillance, including those conducted against the changes to Swedish law
regarding wiretapping, against the development of government databases in a
range of states (including the UK and Israel), and against the use of RFID chips
in passports and other government documents. It was also shown in the rush by
digital liberties activists to provide tools to Iranian protesters enabling them to
evade government Internet filters and surveillance (Anonymous Iran 2009;
Haystack 2009). Digital liberties activists' aversion to corporate power and
attempts by established industries to consolidate their hold on power have also
been demonstrated in activists' regular campaigns against and/or complaints
about the RIAA, Microsoft, AOL Time Warner and other large corporations.
Activists have also identified and protested against numerous instances of
collusion between corporate interests and governments. For example, Cory
Doctorow (2009b) linked to a list of corporate lickspittles that were allowed
access to the Obama administration's secret copyright treaty on Boingboing,
and Xeni Jardin (2009) noted Iranians' boycott of Nokia after reports that it
collaborated in surveillance of Iranian citizens during the 2009 protests against
the alleged rigging of the elections. The latter blog post was followed by further
calls for boycotts of Nokia in the comments section. This rejection of centralised
power meshes well with the more anarchistic tendencies within the GJM.
While this firmly places the DLM on the anti-authoritarian side of the
freedom/authority axis of the political spectrum, digital liberties activists have far
more faith in market solutions and the outcomes of capitalism than most
activists within the GJM. Ultimately, this positions the DLM closer to liberal and
libertarian politics than the predominantly anti-capitalist/anti-corporate GJM. In
part, this is due to a common (although not universal) assumption within the
DLM that capitalism leads to an effective allocation of resources and
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encourages innovation, as long as the bloat of corporate monopoly is avoided.

Pekka Himanen's discussion of the hacker ethic which informs much of the
DLM notes that hackers recognise that in a capitalist society it is very difficult to
be completely free unless a person has sufficient individual capital (2001, 54).
Activists within the GJM often propose that the solution to this problem is to
escape from, dismantle, or radically reform capitalism (cf. Jordan 2004, 10;
Notes from Nowhere 2003a, 107; Porto Alegre II 2002). In contrast to this,
Himanen explores examples of hackers who have chosen capitalist hackerism
after deciding that if one is the empowered capitalist, one can make one's own
life decisions (Himanen 2001, 54). This individualist solution calls for no
structural change, and undermines the critique of capitalism that it answers. By
making a commitment to capitalist hackerism, hackers at least implicitly
concede the possibility of achieving their goals within the system.
The DLM is also characterised by a pervasive commitment to American ideals,
particularly freedom, primarily defined negatively (as freedom from control)
rather than positively (as freedom to access opportunities or resources). This is
demonstrated by the politics expressed by Lawrence Lessig and the Free
Culture groups. Lessig comes from a liberal, reformist perspective. Neither he
nor his argument is revolutionary. Lessig argues that the current system of
intellectual property rights in the United States has become skewed too far in
the direction of existing cultural industries, particularly the large record and film
studios. If America is to continue to be a centre for cultural innovation, if it is to
preserve its tradition of free culture, it needs better intellectual property law.
Lessig's description of free culture makes his perspective clear through the
concepts that he associates with the free of free culture: free as in free
speech, free markets, free trade, free enterprise, free will, and free
elections (2004, xiv). Throughout Free Culture, Lessig repeatedly emphasises
that he has faith in the American system, and is trying to preserve its best
features rather than challenge it. Many others working within the DLM take a
similar position. Yochai Benkler, a lawyer and academic who has worked with
Lessig on open content licences and has published a voluminous work on The
Wealth of Networks (2006) similarly sees the Internet revolution,

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as a dimension of individual freedom; as a platform for better democratic

participation; as a medium to foster a more critical and self-reflective
culture; and, in an increasingly information-dependent global economy,
as a mechanism to achieve improvements in human development
everywhere (2006, 2).
There are hints here at a politics that rejects, or at least critiques, capitalism and
representative democracy, but the basic faith in the market and the value of
freedom and democratic participation are far from radical.
As in any social movement, a range of perspectives are represented within the
DLM. While more centrist movement participants frame issues through the
language and ideas of liberal politics, libertarianism also has a strong presence
within the movement. In part, this may be a result of the politics of online culture
that emerged in the early days of the Internet. Tim Jordan relates this to a view
of the Internet as an an electronic frontier where pioneers meet beyond the
interference of government and bureaucracy (2001, 2) 32. Jordan argues that
because of the experience of Internet users who enter cyberspace alone, and
must confront their singularity before building a sense of others in the
electronic world, political ideologies that emphasise individual liberty and the
right to self-government tend to prevail (2001, 8). To the extent that today's Web
is an intensely social one in which many users' online and offline communities
are interconnected (cf. Lenhart et al. 2007), we might question the relevance of
Jordan's research to users' current experiences. However, when speaking of
the cultures within long-running (by Internet standards) communities founded in
the early days of the Internet, Jordan's research remains relevant.
This is borne out by the self-identification with libertarianism espoused by a
significant number of high-profile members of the DLM. Libertarians within the
movement include Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, who has declared
himself a follower of Ayn Rand (Zittrain 2008, 143) and Eric S. Raymond, who
wrote one of the founding texts on open source software. Similarly, John Perry
Barlow, co-founder of the EFF, has described peoples' online experiences as
creating a small 'l' libertarian culture, as people experience functional, large32

The metaphor of cyberspace as a frontier, and its implications for women, is expanded upon
by Miller (1995).

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scale anarchy (Jordan 2001, 8). Barlow has said that I personally don't believe
in the nation-state, and has been described as both an anarchist and a
cyberlibertarian (Barlow 1997; Wikipedians 2009b). While Cory Doctorow has
resisted attempts to label him a libertarian, his activism and books have been
adopted with great enthusiasm by libertarians, particularly Little Brother (2008),
which won the Prometheus Award for libertarian science fiction in 2009. Those
within the movement rarely make a clear distinction between libertarianism and
anarchism, but the faith in market mechanisms and individualism frequently
expressed by movement participants distinguishes the libertarian tendencies of
the DLM from the more collectivist and anti-capitalist anarchism that runs
through the GJM.
The gap between the left-wing and frequently radical politics of the GJM and the
more liberal and/or libertarian politics of the DLM is one possible explanation for
the current dearth of links between the GJM and the DLM. The different political
orientation of each movement would explain, in part, why the DLM does not
seem a natural ally for GJM activists to turn to. Another possible explanation
would be that digital liberties activists' framing of digital spaces and
technologies as key areas of contestation has not yet fully been accepted by
external audiences, including GJM activists. Linking back to the earlier
discussion of possible under-reporting of digital liberties activists' involvement in
GJM activities, it is possible that GJM activists remain unaware or unconvinced
that struggles to (re)gain control over these technologies are necessary and
urgent. Conversely, the liberal and libertarian politics that run through the DLM
are unlikely to be conducive to seeking alliances within the GJM, particularly
given the dominant representation of GJM activists within mainstream media as
violent, disruptive, fringe characters, who are uninformed about economic and
political realities (Boykoff 2006, 205). Although most digital liberties activists
have the resources to seek alternative sources of information on the GJM which
portray the movement in a more positive light, they do not necessarily have
incentives to do so. There are therefore significant barriers to activists within
either movement seeking greater connections with the other.
Just as in the case of the Indian opposition to GM crops, however, the
relationship between the DLM and the GJM is not simple to map. While, as I
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have argued above, the evidence of connections between digital liberties

activism and the work of the GJM is limited, there is also evidence that the gulf
between the movements has been bridged and that connections between them
are growing. For example, several prominent digital liberties activists have
taken steps towards acknowledging the GJM's work, and activists from within
the GJM have begun to make links with digital liberties activism. BoingBoing
has occasionally covered GJM events, including police violence at London's
anti-G20 protests, framing the story in terms favourable to the GJM activists
(Doctorow 2009c), and indigenous anti-globalization protests from Eucador
(Jardin 2006). From the other direction, Vandana Shiva, a key figure within the
GJM, has compared open source software to open seeds, saying that open
source software is a way of spreading prosperity and knowledge in society in
the same way that saving and swapping seeds is (Shiva in Elsedoudi et al.
2009). The video of this discussion was then posted online to Red Hat
Magazine33 along with a link to Navdanya, the organisation Shiva works with.
Discussion of digital liberties issues by GJM activists, and vice versa, is not
necessarily common. It does exist, however, and may be instrumental in
developing and extending the frames of each movement in order to incorporate
issues addressed by the other.
There are also tantalising glimpses of projects emerging that cross the divide
between digital liberties issues and GJM activism. One example of this is the
One Big Torrent website, which uses peer-to-peer technology to share material
that deals with or is relevant to issues of social justice, progressive and radical
politics, independent media, ecology (One Big Torrent 2009). There are also a
variety of organisations that provide information and communication technology
(ICT) support services to GJM activists, including the Resist! collective in
Canada (Resist!ca 2009), riseup.net (2009), and Bangalore's Janastu. Kate
Milberry argues that examples such as these, as well as the use of F/LOSS for
the Indymedia site, demonstrate that the GJM has broadened to include a new
brand of activism, one that moves beyond simply using technology toward
particular ends to include the modification and transformation of technology
itself (2006a). This would seem to indicate that some digital liberties activism is
becoming incorporated into the GJM, and that the DLM overlaps in part with the
33

Red Hat is a prominent open source software company.

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GJM. However, the available data leaves this question open as the scale of
collaboration between digital liberties activists and the GJM remains limited.
Moreover, Milberry has not yet provided enough data to determine whether
there is a distinction between activists who fall within the scope of the DLM and
those who are, in contrast, tech-savvy GJM activists.
Attempts to map the relationship between the GJM and the DLM are further
complicated by the difficulties involved in mapping rapidly shifting ground, and
by the informality of many movement connections. As I noted in the previous
chapter, the DLM is still emerging, and as such is in a state of transition.
Connections and overlaps between digital liberties activism and activism in
other movements are therefore still developing. Connections may also exist at
the level of informal relationships and cross-movement participation or overlap.
Relationships such as these are not likely to be visible to researchers of social
movements unless researchers are able to conduct in-depth participant
observation. Even in such cases, the range of informal relationships that
become visible will be highly localised and depend greatly upon the activists
with which researchers are working. It will therefore require both more time and
more research before a better understanding can be developed of the
relationship between the DLM and the GJM. For now, I posit that the DLM is
one of the innumerable movements that overlaps with and helps to constitute
the GJM, but the extent of the overlap is as yet unclear.
Both the DLM and the Indian movement against GM crops have a complex
relationship to the GJM. While the Indian movement can be reasonably placed
within the bounds of the GJM on the basis of its adoption of GJM frames and
involvement in key GJM organisations and events, its connection to the broader
movement is, arguably, fragile. The link between the Indian movement and the
GJM depends in large part on the ability and willingness of movement leaders
to sustain and nurture international connections. This link also depends on
frame contestation within the movement, as global justice frames occasionally
come into conflict with other frames, including nationalism. The DLM, as defined
in Chapter Three, has not adopted the politics of the GJM, and digital liberties
activists have not been heavily involved in GJM events. Nevertheless, some
connections exist between digital liberties activists and the GJM, and activism
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contesting the structure of ICTs is, as Milberry (2006a; 2006b) argues, taking
place within the GJM. Drawing a firm line between the GJM and the DLM is not,
therefore, as simple as it first appears. One way to deal with this would be to
call for firmer theoretical models for conceptualising and mapping social
movements. Another, which I prefer and have attempted here, is to accept the
amorphous and fluid nature of social movements as inherent, and to highlight it
rather than attempting to define it away.
This means that it is vital that we evaluate the contributions that struggles over
knowledge make to the GJM in a way which recognises the structure and
diversity of the GJM itself. The GJM, as argued in Chapter One, does not have
a centralised structure, and has no single manifesto or plan of action, nor is
there a blueprint for the world which GJM activists are struggling to create.
Activists working to further the goals of the GJM are not directed from a central
point, and their contributions take diverse forms. The GJM's work, therefore,
must be understood as growing from a great many actions, small and large,
distributed throughout the world.
It is, to an extent, important whether particular activists, groups, or movements,
are linked to the GJM. Such links help to establish whether actors see their
work as part of the GJM's project, and whether they are informed by the
discussions and debates that flow through the GJM. However, the connections
between struggles at the local level and the GJM as a whole may be less
important, in the end, than the extent to which such struggles fit with and
support the GJM's vision of a better world. The following section therefore
focuses on the myriad ways in which each of the case-study movements
contribute to the GJM's project.

Section two: struggles over knowledge and contributions to the

global justice movement
Both the Indian movement against GM crops and the DLM make vital
contributions to the GJM's project, despite the complexities of each movement's
relationship with the GJM. The multifaceted nature of the GJM is such that the
movement's work is underway in multiple spaces around the world, through
local struggles and international networks, legal actions and direct action. The
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celebration of diversity that runs through the GJM, discussed in Chapter One, is
conducive to the emergence of a movement of movements that does not
require individual actors to sign up to a single manifesto or become part of an
overarching organisation in order to support the movement's work. The
struggles that constitute the GJM take many forms throughout the world.
Similarly, struggles over knowledge take many forms throughout the world.
Those working to retain democratic control over knowledge are doing so in
many different ways, and many different spaces. The case studies discussed
here each make vital contributions to the GJM through their own work, without
this work necessarily being framed as part of the GJM's project. This is
because, as outlined in Chapter One, knowledge systems play a vital role in
sustaining the movement's structure and work, and in gaining legitimacy for
GJM activists' arguments. The DLM and the Indian movement opposing GM
crops are contributing to the GJM through their attempts to (re)gain democratic
control over key technologies, to build peer-based knowledge systems, to
preserve and develop diversity, and to resist enclosure of the commons.

Democratic control over key technologies

As I argued in the first chapter, Information Age technologies play a vital role in
the structure of the GJM and as tools in its work. More generally, however,
control over technology is important because it is central to the lives of the
individuals and communities that constitute the GJM. Both the Indian movement
against GM crops and the DLM are involved in attempts to retain, or regain,
user control over important technologies. In the case of the Indian movement,
the struggle is focused around seed as a symbolic reference and a basic need.
As described in Chapter Two, the launch of the Beeja (Seed) Satyagraha was
an important moment in the history of the movement against GM crops. The
alienation of seeds from Indian farmers, and indeed farmers throughout the
world, has been underway since the Green Revolution: farmers came to depend
more and more on purchased hybrid seed, which did not perform well if resown. The Beeja Satyagraha attempted to work against this trend, declaring
that control over seeds was as symbolic of India's current struggles as the
spinning wheel had been during the Independence struggle (Assadi 2004, 208).
Parallels were also drawn with the Salt March resisting British taxes on salt. The
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KRRS said that the only difference between the two was that the Beeja
Satyagraha was part of the second Independence movement (Assadi 1995,
199). Movement activists have continued to assert that as seeds are a
necessity for life, and as seeds are at the centre of farmers' lives and work,
farmers must have access to them.
Practically, this has meant that the movement has resisted attempts to create
legal barriers to the sharing and saving of seeds. While some of this activism
has been directed at national governments, activists from the Indian movement
have also been instrumental in raising awareness of the effects of international
institutions surrounding IPR. In 1993, for example, in the leadup to India's
accession to TRIPS, five hundred thousand farmers rallied in Bangalore in
protest (Borowiak 2004, 520). Protests such as these have politicised the
application of IPRs to seeds, and to indigenous knowledge systems more
generally. Movement activists have also worked to reconfigure the language of
rights, arguing that they reserve the right to punish those who are guilty of
pirating the common intellectual property rights, reversing thereby the burden of
proof to require that MNCs prove that they have any rights over agricultural
knowledge. This was also demonstrated by the movement's creation of the day
of Reaffirming the Common Intellectual Property Rights of the Peasants on
August 15 1993 (Assadi 1995, 203). The work of the Indian movement, as well
as that of other peasants' and indigenous peoples' movements throughout the
world, has been vital in preventing the wholesale privatisation of agricultural
knowledge in the Global South, although this is a battle that is still very much
under way.
The development of seed banks and research into the knowledge associated
with traditional seed varieties has also been an important part of this struggle.
Several of the organisations discussed in Chapter Two have made community
seed banks a centrepiece of their work, including Navdanya, Gene Campaign,
and the GREEN Foundation. These seed banks focus on in situ seed
conservation, in which seeds are used by farmers, who then harvest and return
seed to the bank. Ex situ seed conservation, such as the Svalbard Global Seed
Vault in Norway, preserves seed varieties as back ups in case of biodiversity
loss or as static libraries to be drawn on for research (Ministry of Food and
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Agriculture 2009). In contrast to this approach, in situ conservation focuses on

seeds as part of an interdependent system. GREEN Foundation emphasises
the importance not only of access to seed, but also the preservation of seed
selection, and when and under what conditions to sow. Women's role as
custodians of this knowledge is highlighted (GREEN Foundation 2008b). All
three organisations have focused their efforts on crop and medicinal varieties
used locally, such as millets and rice varieties that are integral to food
sovereignty. They also prioritise access for marginalised sectors of the
community, including women and dalits. These seed banks provide access to
seeds, as well as to the knowledge necessary to use them well, ensuring the
continued existence of alternatives to commercial seed (including both GM and
high-yielding varieties).
As the need for preserving knowledge associated with seeds makes clear, the
Indian movement discussed here is concerned with far more than the seeds
themselves. Those opposing the use of GM crops are concerned not just with
the type of seeds sown, but also with the agricultural systems in which they are
used. The emphasis on agriculture as a system is clear throughout the
movement, from Shiva's insistence on indigenous agricultural cropping systems'
symbiotic relationship between soil, water, farm animals and plants (1993, 39)
to the KRRS's linkage of the colonization of the seed through the myth of
miracle seeds, destruction of genetic diversity and ecological stability through
the Green Revolution and Monoculture, soil toxicity and soil erosion due to
heavy fertilizer use and HYVs [high yielding varieties] (KRRS in Assadi 1995,
192). Ensuring seed sovereignty is therefore part of a larger project of building
farmers' control over their means of production.
This project is often framed within a Gandhian vision of swadeshi, village-level
self-reliance. Subhash Palekar, a proponent of zero-budget farming who was on
a speaking tour organised by the KRRS at the time that I conducted my field
work, argues that,
in the old India [...] Every village was totally self-reliant [...] whatever
demands in the village, they were fulfilled by small village industries. If
you want clothes, it was there. If you want oil, it was there. Each
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commodity was manufactured in the village. So the money was not taken
from the village to the cities. The farmer was going to the city to sell his
produce money would come to the village from the city. So villages
were prosperous (Palekar 2006, pers. comm., Jan 19).
Palekar advocates avoiding any agricultural system, including some forms of
organic farming, that require buying inputs such as fertiliser, seed, pesticides or
water from outside the farm. There are also other projects attempting to build,
retain, or reproduce agricultural systems that require little to no inputs, ranging
from permaculture to attempts to revive traditional Indian breeds of cattle (cf.
Joshi 2004; Love4Cow Trust 2009). These projects all help to sustain or regain
local autonomy, strengthening the position of local communities.
These struggles contribute significantly to the GJM. Work by Patel (2007),
among others, provides convincing evidence that the world food system, from
seed to table, is increasingly under the control of a few large transnational
corporations. There are numerous ways in which activists within the GJM
benefit from a decoupling of food production from this global food system. Many
movements within the GJM are composed of peasants, farmers, and others
who rely on agricultural production for an income, including those involved in
PGA and Via Campesina. Agricultural systems that remove or decrease reliance
on the market strengthen the position of those within these movements. By
encouraging people to avoid relying on and contributing to corporate control
over agriculture, these movements nurture alternatives to capitalism in its
current form and create spaces in which the power of corporations is
diminished. Most fundamentally, local control of a significant proportion of food
production is vital to attempts to build a world in which local communities have
meaningful autonomy.
As in the case of the Indian movement against GM crops, the DLM is working to
retain control over the technologies of everyday life (albeit for rather different
lives). This is expressed in a concern with preserving or establishing user
control over software, hardware, and information flows. For many in the West,
ICTs form the fabric of everyday life. In Australia, for example, 67 per cent of
households had computers and 75 per cent had Internet access by 2008, and
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80 per cent of households had mobile phones by 2007 (Screen Australia 2009).
As the knowledge industries grow in both the Global North and the Global
South, more and more people are working directly with ICTs, while even many
jobs previously thought of as manual labour rely considerably on networks of
ICTs. A loss of control over these technologies may not imply the same
devastating economic consequences for users that Indian farmers have
suffered as a result of their increasing dependence on outside inputs and prices
determined by the global market. However, as many digital liberties activists
have pointed out, it means losing the ability to re-cut the fabric of mainstream
culture to produce critiques of dominant institutions (Gaylor 2009). It also
implies a ceding of power over the technologies that we rely on to
communicate, to work, to create, and to organise.
Just as the Indian movement is reviving traditional agricultural systems and
experimenting with new agricultural systems that are alternatives to large-scale
monocultures, the DLM is working to preserve and create alternatives to digital
monocultures and elite-controlled technologies. Once again, there is no
resistance without alternatives. One example of this is the development and
promotion of creative commons and copyleft licences, which provide an
alternative to the restrictive approach to copyright currently in ascendancy. As
well as being used for a wide range of F/LOSS, these licences are also
increasingly being used on content-sharing sites such as Flickr and on search
engines, including Google and Yahoo. Licences such as these serve two
purposes. Firstly, they give content creators a means by which they can retain
some control over their work without capitulating to a system of overly-restrictive
copyright. A number of publications associated with the GJM are being given
copyleft licences, including books (Notes from Nowhere 2003), Indymedia
websites, and online content from magazines that focus on GJM activism (such
as The New Internationalist). Secondly, and more importantly, these licences
provide both a critique of dominant copyright practices and alternatives to them,
providing one possible model of a way to balance creators' interests with a
vibrant culture open to reuse and remixing. Digital liberties activists' reformist
framing of these licences will not necessarily be adopted by the GJM, but at the
very least the DLM has opened a space for discussing alternatives.

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The DLM has also been instrumental in developing and promoting a range of
tools, including software and peer-to-peer networks, that allow users to evade
or resist government and corporate controls. Some of these may seem trivial at
first: for example, the Adblock Plus Firefox extension was developed to allow
users to block pop-up and side-bar advertisements from websites (Palant
2009). However, even software such as this serves an important role in resisting
the privatisation of cyberspace. Wladimir Palant, creator of Adblock Plus, writes
on the extension's Frequently Asked Questions page that widespread
adoption of ad blocking software will make intrusive ads economically inefficient
until they become as rare as pop-up windows already are today, noting that
this may help to make the Internet a better place. Similarly, even explicitly nonideological open source software 34 provides alternatives to the corporate
hegemony of Apple and Microsoft. For those who want to avoid supporting
multinational corporations or the controls on user behaviour that are attached to
Apple and Microsoft's software, Linux and other F/LOSS are vital alternatives.
As well as software, the creation of peer-to-peer tools such as Bittorrent and
sites like The Pirate Bay create temporary autonomous zones (Bey 1991) that
are relatively free of government and corporate control. Not all of these tools
and spaces are explicitly designed for political reasons, or for use by activists,
but they nevertheless help to resist corporate and government control over ICTs
and democratise control over ICTs.
Finally, digital liberties activists also provide a number of tools that are aimed
directly at activists, particularly tools designed to evade government censorship
and surveillance. The most notable of these is The Onion Router, a free
software and an open network that helps you defend against a form of network
surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business
activities and relationships, and state security known as traffic analysis (Tor
Project 2009). BoingBoing also provides a guide to getting around online
censorship and surveillance which provides links to useful software, guides, and
networks (BoingBoing 2009). In Little Brother, Cory Doctorow imagines an
operating system called Paranoid Linux which would assume that its user was
under assault from a hostile government and do everything it could to keep its
user's communications secret (2008, 36). This idea was briefly taken up, but
34

To revisit the distinction between open source's apolitical position and the more overtly
politicised position of free/libre software, see Chapter Three.

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seems to have fallen by the wayside. It may well reappear at some point in the
future. Tools such as these enable activists (and ordinary people) to retain
control over communication technologies, evading government attempts to
censor or gather information on citizens. This is important not only for activists
in authoritarian states, but also for GJM activists who may be engaged in illegal
activities which they consider to be justifiable acts of civil disobedience,
particularly in the context of the War on Terror.
In summary, the Indian anti-GM movement and the DLM are both working in
concrete ways to ensure that citizens control the technologies that shape their
lives. In the case of the Indian movement, activists are working to retain
people's control over seeds and agricultural systems in the face of increasing
corporate control. In the case of the DLM, struggles to (re)gain control over ICTs
support the democratisation of the technologies that many of us use to work,
create, and communicate. Activists working in both of these movements
recognise that it means little to have a nominally democratic political system if
other factors limit citizens' ability to exercise meaningful control over their lives.
They are raising awareness of some of the manifold areas in which it is
necessary for people to control the means of production, as well as the means
of communication, and the information and cultural content that we build our
lives on and around. At their most effective, these movements are creating
autonomous spaces in which corporate and government power is diminished, or
even absent, in which alternatives can be explored, and strength gathered.
Even when this ideal is not achieved, however, they increase the ability of
activists to organise, to communicate, to build alternatives to the dominance of
neoliberalism and to preserve the local and particular in the face of globalising
trends.

Peer-based knowledge systems

As we saw in Chapter One, activists within the GJM benefit from shifts towards
peer-based, rather than hierarchical, knowledge systems. There are a
multiplicity of these systems in existence, with varying degrees of openness,
ranging from indigenous knowledge systems around the world through to the
peer-review academic publication system through to Wikipedia and F/LOSS's
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bazaar (Raymond 2000) model of development. While each of these casestudy movements is working to preserve existing peer-based knowledge
systems, their projects are not merely commemorating these systems: both
movements' work includes active, innovative attempts to find new ways of
storing and producing knowledge in an open and accessible way.
For those involved in the Indian movement against GM crops, the politics of
knowledge are vital. Shiva argues that the Green Revolution was accompanied
by a shift in the whole knowledge system associated with agriculture. Peasants
were no longer seen as plant breeding specialists and custodians of the
common genetic heritage, and their place was taken by scientists of
multinational seed companies and international research institutions. Plant
breeding strategies also changed, shifting from a focus on maintaining and
enriching genetic diversity and self-renewability to one on uniformity and nonrenewability, aimed primarily at increasing transnational profits and First World
control over the genetic resources of the Third World (Shiva 1991, 63). At the
same time, Shiva (1991; 1997; 2001) argues, measurement of yields and
productivity within what she calls the Green Revolution paradigm (which she
also calls an engineering paradigm) is heavily skewed towards monocultures,
ignoring the multiple outputs of indigenous agricultural systems. Through this
process, Shiva argues, control over agricultural knowledge slipped from the
hands of peasants and into the hands of experts in academic institutions and
corporations.
The Indian movement therefore has a high stake in establishing the value of
traditional and grassroots knowledge. Rebuilding the understanding of peasants
and farmers as plant breeding specialists and challenging the Green Revolution
paradigm is the only way in which the battle can be moved to ground that
favours the movement. Shiva argues for a view of knowledge that understands
all societies as having their own knowledge systems that are suited to local
conditions and needs (1993, 135). Practically, the support given by Shiva and
others to traditional knowledge systems is expressed throughout the movement
in the revival or continuance of agricultural festivals, consultation with farmers
who continue to use traditional farming techniques, and the preservation of
cultural practices and knowledge surrounding indigenous agricultural systems.
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Experiments are also under way with new methods of organising this
knowledge, such as the GREEN Foundation's collection of digital videos.
Many of the groups involved in this work are also looking at ways to develop
existing knowledge. GREEN Foundation and Navdanya are just two of the
many organisations within the Indian anti-GM movement that are working to
rejuvenate or recover indigenous agricultural knowledge, as well as to make this
knowledge available to others (GREEN Foundation, 2009c; Navdanya, 2009).
These organisations draw on traditional and organic farming practices from
different parts of India, as well as related practices from other parts of the world.
For example, while GREEN Foundation focuses on maintaining local
indigenous knowledge around agricultural systems, staff members also praised
and drew on Bill Mollison's work on permaculture and organic practices drawn
from other countries in their discussions with me.
This work ties into the second important aspect of the movement's attempt to
strengthen peer-based knowledge systems: access to information. Since the
early days of its founding, the KRRS and other actors within the Indian
movement have shown concern over limits to the dissemination of knowledge.
During their contestation of the Dunkel Draft, the KRRS argued that the Draft
would allow for:
commercialization of research. As a consequence secrecy will prevail on
the dissemination of knowledge. Knowledge, being a product of social
interaction and social development, any patenting would finally impinge
on the freedom of thought and expression, and finally human rights
[sic] (KRRS in Assadi 1995, 197).
Throughout the movement, attempts are being made not only to preserve and
develop indigenous knowledge, but also to ensure that marginalised
communities retain access to it. Some of these attempts have involved large
protests or legal struggles, such as the 1993 day of Reaffirming the Common
Intellectual Property Rights of the Peasants held by the KRRS (Assadi 1995,
203) and the struggles over basmati, turmeric and neem. Others are smallscale, but nevertheless important: workshops, radio shows, and the publication
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of information in pamphlets, books, or websites. GREEN Foundation's use of

creative commons licences for their Digital Green repository (2009) is a
promising sign in this respect.
Some of the attempts by the movement to build grassroots agricultural systems
in which farmers' knowledge is valued are, of necessity, highly localised. Even
these limited, local efforts contribute to the GJM's project by preserving and
developing the diversity of alternatives to large-scale, corporate-controlled
agriculture. Many of these local projects connect with others, creating a web of
communication through which knowledge is transferred. Local examples of
successful preservation and application of indigenous knowledge are also used
as inspiration for other alternatives and as counter-examples to those who claim
that international experts know best. There is obviously no single local,
embedded, knowledge, but each project to preserve and develop such
knowledge systems, in combination with spirited defences of traditional
knowledge in a more general sense, such as those written by Shiva, serve to
bolster the position of GJM activists.
The peer-based knowledge systems being developed within the DLM are far
removed from those that Shiva discusses in her work and, as noted in the first
chapter, it would be a stretch to describe them as grassroots knowledge. Data
on the digital divide shows that there are still significant gaps between and
within regions in terms of Internet access. In 2009, data published by Nielsen
Online, the International Telecommunications Union, and other sources showed
that approximately 74 per cent of the US population had Internet access, while
only around 50 per cent of those in Europe, 24 per cent of those in the Middle
East, 18 per cent of those in Asia, and 7 per cent of those in Africa had Internet
access (Miniwatts Marketing Group 2009). Considerable variation within regions
also exists.
Within states, there are significant gaps between groups in terms of Internet
access and usage. For example, Jones and Fox (2009, 3-4) found that 30 per
cent of US Internet users are between 18 and 32 years old. This figure
represents a disproportionate Internet presence relative to this age group's
proportion of the population, which is 26 per cent (Fox & Jones 2009, 3). Chen
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and Wellman's research suggests that digital divides based on age also exist
elsewhere, and are more pronounced in some countries, including Italy, Japan,
and Mexico (2004, 43). Chen and Wellman's research also notes several other
divides, including declining, but persistent, gender divides in the UK, Japan, and
China, persistent gender divides in Korea, and increasing gender divides in
Germany and Italy (2004, 43). Digital divides based on socioeconomic status
are perhaps the most important, with a declining but persistent divide based on
class in the US, increasing divides in the UK, Germany, and Korea, and huge
divides in China and Mexico (Chen & Wellman 2004, 43). Claims that online
communities or projects are open to contributions from, or accessible by,
everyone, therefore need to come with qualifications.
However, all knowledge systems have limits, even those developed with the aim
of being open and accessible. Developing traditional agricultural systems at a
local scale will be useful to certain demographics, and developing peer-based
knowledge systems online is useful to a very different demographic. Wikipedia
and F/LOSS development and forums are, at least in theory, open to anyone,
but in a practical sense a significant majority of the world has a limited ability to
contribute to these projects. Nevertheless, the DLM makes a vital contribution to
the struggle for peer-based knowledge systems by continually asserting that
software, encyclopaedias, music, fiction, and other such work produced by
amateurs is valuable and worth protecting. Lawrence Lessig, for example,
praises the democratising effects of new technologies:
You could write an essay about the inconsistencies in the arguments of
the politician you most love to hate, or you could make a short film that
puts statement against statement. You could write a poem to express
your love, or you could weave together a string a mash-up - of songs
from your favorite artists in a collage and make it available on the Net.
[] The technology of digital capturing and sharing promises a world of
extraordinarily diverse creativity that can be easily and broadly shared.
And as that creativity is applied to democracy, it will enable a broad
range of citizens to use technology to express and criticize and contribute
to the culture all around (2004, 184).

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This sentiment is repeated throughout the movement, whether in other

defences of the value of remixes (Gaylor 2009), the many words written in
praise of Wikipedia (Zittrain 2008, 133-137; Benkler 2006, 70-74), or the
arguments put forward in favour of F/LOSS (Raymond 2000). In opposition to
claims that the democratisation of culture has led to decreasing standards
(Keen 2007; Helprin 2009), digital liberties activists argue that knowledge
produced by amateurs is valuable and enriching.
Seed banks, compendia of traditional agricultural techniques, Wikipedia, and
creative commons licenses are all ways of preserving and building on the
knowledge of those whose contributions might otherwise be overlooked. Each
challenges the idea that only formally-accredited experts can produce useful
knowledge. The knowledge embodied in peer-based systems is often different
from that produced by experts. Seed banks that serve local needs will contain a
smaller range of seeds and a greater amount of accompanying agricultural
knowledge than the Global Seed Vault. Another example of this, admitted by
Wikipedians, is Wikipedia's disproportionate coverage of trivial subjects (such
as lightsabers) in comparison to more serious subjects (such as the printing
press) (Wikipedians 2009a)35. The point here is not that peer-produced
knowledge is a better way of producing the same knowledge, but rather that it is
a way of producing knowledge relevant to the community from which it
emerges. Peer-produced knowledge systems give activists, and non-activist
citizens, a chance to contribute directly to creating new understandings of the
world.
These case studies also provide examples of the revival of, or experimentation
with, peer-based vetting of knowledge. In the case of the traditional and organic
agricultural systems promoted by the movement opposing GM crops, my
observations of the GREEN Foundation and KRRS's work show that agricultural
knowledge is developed and validated through a combination of reference to
local traditions and practices, small-scale experimentation with new techniques
by farmers, and discussion at village meetings. These processes are not
without their problems, as Stone's (2007) work shows, and more research is
35

Wikigroaning, as this practice is called, involves comparing a useful Wikipedia article that
normal people might read to a somehow similar article that is longer, but at the same time,
useless to a very large fraction of the population. More examples can be found on the
original blog entry where the pursuit was proposed (Titanium 2007).

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required into the relationship between community-level decision-making and

external actors such as agricultural extension workers, NGO workers, and seed
company representatives.
Many of the communities that constitute the DLM have developed intricate, selfreflexive, and rigorously documented processes for decision-making and vetting
of content. Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View guidelines and discussion pages
provide one well-known example of such a process, but Slashdot's moderation
system is particularly notable. Comments are a vital part of Slashdot's peerreview system because they allow other Internet users to provide evidence or
analysis that confirms, contradicts, or expands on the items posted. Slashdot
has a complicated system for the moderation of such comments: the
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page (Slashdot 2009) discussing
comments and moderation runs to over 7,000 words. This system is designed
to sort the gems and the crap from the steady stream of information that flows
through [Slashdot]. And wherever possible, it tries to make the readers of the
site take on the responsibility (Slashdot 2009). The system works by
occasionally granting registered users of Slashdot moderation points, picking
from those users who read Slashdot frequently, but not obsessively. These
moderation points can then be spent rating other users' comments with
descriptive comments such as informative and a score between -1 and 5. This
system of moderation is, in turn, moderated by reference to users' Karma,
which is determined by users' activity on the site, and by a system of metamoderation (Slashdot 2009). Slashdot's FAQ shows an awareness of debate
within the community about moderation, evident not only in the changes that
have been made to the system but also in references to issues of fairness. For
example, one heading asks Moderation seems restrictive. Is it really
necessary?, while another section addresses anonymous comments, arguing
that We think the ability to post anonymously is important. Sometimes people
have important information they want to post, but are afraid to do it if they can
be linked to it (Slashdot 2009). Systems such as Slashdot's and others used
within the DLM and anti-GM movement provide models by which communities
can become arbiters of accepted knowledge, and do so through a dynamic
process that allows debate and change.

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Attempts to build peer-based knowledge systems and to promote the value of

grassroots and other peer-based knowledge are vital to the GJM. The
availability of knowledge produced by and suited to the needs of local
communities is an important resource for projects to build globalisation from
below. This is particularly important when it comes to information on agriculture
and other necessities, such as shelter and appropriate technology. In a broader
sense, gaining recognition for and acceptance of peer-based knowledge shifts
the power relations between elites and those who cannot call on the authority
accorded by the interlinked matrices of wealth, political power, or institutional
accreditation. Activists within the GJM are arguing for a more democratic world,
and this claim is greatly strengthened by struggles that assert that local
communities and non-elites can be knowledgeable, informed, and innovative.
Such struggles undermine the idea that decisions must be made by experts
from above, maintaining that ordinary people are also experts and are capable
of making their own choices about how to live, how to manage resources, and
how to solve local problems.

Preserving diversity
Diversity is both an end and a means in GJM activists' attempts to build one
world with room for many worlds. The two case studies discussed in previous
chapters provide concrete examples of the value of diversity. They are also
working directly to preserve diversity in the face of homogenising and
centralising tendencies. These tendencies are seen in the creation of corporate
cartels in areas ranging from the global food system and the loss of agricultural
crop biodiversity (Patel 2007) to the media environment, where ever-fewer
umbrella corporations control an increasing proportion of the market (Gaylor
2009). Diversity of opinions, of politics, and of lifestyles are all important to the
project of building globalisation from below. They represent alternatives to
neoliberal globalisation, as well as being valuable in their own right.
The daily work of many activists within the Indian anti-GM crop movement is
centred around preserving diversity in the face of spreading monocultures, as
well as presenting arguments against the monocultures associated with the
Green Revolution and biotechnology. By setting up or maintaining systems
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preserving local seed varieties and developing a multiplicity of organic and lowinput agricultural systems, activists ensure that a range of alternatives to Green
Revolution agriculture exist. Those within the movement also use these
systems as concrete examples on which they base their arguments against GM
crops, and industrialised agriculture more generally. Activists within the
movement

make

several

interlinked

arguments

regarding

agricultural

biodiversity (GREEN Foundation 2009b; Shiva 1993). These include the

importance of agricultural biodiversity for environmental sustainability and food
sovereignty: retaining and developing a range of crops and agricultural systems
allows farmers in different areas to adapt to local conditions, and lowers the
chances that disease or bad conditions will wipe out an entire crop. As one
activist on the Intercontinental Caravan put it during a discussion with the
director of Nuffield, a charitable trust that published reports advocating the use
of GM crops in the Global South, [w]hat about our ecological and cultural
biodiversity? When you limit seed varieties to one or two? Now we have 100
varieties. If one fails, we have many others we can use and if we have only one
and it fails, all fails (Ainger 2003, 168). Domestic crop diversity also provides
farmers with food security by providing a range of nutrients in the form of varied
food crops. Activists combine practical action to preserve and develop a diverse
range of agricultural systems and crop varieties with attempts to highlight the
value of diversity.
These arguments are also generalised by activists to refer more generally to the
struggle between diversity and monocultures. Vandana Shiva's work provides
the clearest example of this. Shiva's (1993) Monocultures of the Mind uses the
opposition between monocultures and diversity as a framework for connecting
discussions of Green Revolution agriculture, GM crops, and eucalyptus
plantations to the broader issues of North-South relations, privatisation,
intellectual property regimes, and imperialism. Shiva argues that, [t]he main
threat to living with diversity comes from the habit of thinking in terms of
monocultures; from what I have called 'Monocultures of the Mind'. Monocultures
of the mind make diversity disappear from perception, and consequently from
the world (1993, 5). Shiva has also linked monocultures of the mind to
globalisation, arguing in an interview that, [t]he kind of global monoculture in
which everyone feels as if they have to run faster than they are running to stay
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in the same place cannot continue. I think we will become disenchanted with the
glamour of globalization (Shiva 2008). These arguments connect local
struggles to the broader project of building globalisation from below.
Participants in the DLM also put forward arguments for diversity. At times, these
arguments resonate with those used by the Indian movement. For example,
proponents of F/LOSS sometimes draw an analogy between the software
ecosystem and agricultural systems. Eric Raymond, a key proponent of the
open source position, has said that he would like to see alternatives to Linux
succeed more than they are currently because mono-cultures are vulnerable. If
you get a mono-culture that has just one genetic line then the first plague can
wipe it out. I would like to see more diversity in the open source community,
going on to describe alternatives to Linux as important to the whole Open
Source ecology (1999). However, one of the key differences between digital
liberties activists' arguments for diversity and those of the Indian activists
discussed above are that the former are often (but not always) couched within
the liberal language of choice. So, for example, while Stallman sees free
software as an ethical imperative (2009), advocates of the open source
approach tend to highlight the benefits of F/LOSS in the familiar terms of
consumer capitalism, including better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility,
[and] lower cost (Open Source Initiative 2007). This tendency to waver
between describing diversity as a political, social, or ethical good and as a
consumer good is also present in other sections of the DLM, including in
discussions of the need to retain a vibrant sphere of cultural production.
At the same time, digital liberties activists are working to create a healthy digital
ecosystem. This is manifested clearly in the emerging F/LOSS ecosystem: for
example, as of February 2009 230,000 software projects were making use of
SourceForge.net, the leading F/LOSS development website (SourceForge
2009). It is also shown in the creation of sites devoted to promoting creative
commons-licensed work and making this work available for remixing, such as
the Audio and Legal Music for Videos sections of the Creative Commons
website (2009). More importantly, digital liberties activists have repeatedly
brought attention to emerging digital monopolies. The most glaring example of
this has been the critique of Microsoft's domination of the software market,
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which has long been a target for F/LOSS advocates. Eric Raymond's response
to leaked Microsoft documents discussing the threat posed by Linux exemplify
this critique. Raymond writes that these documents reveal the insularity, the
arrogance, [and] the obsessive drive to control both markets and customers
characteristic of Microsoft's internal culture, and goes on to say that, [t]he real
issue is that they won't leave me and my friends any safe place. They want to
hijack the Internet we built with brains and sweat and blood; they want top-tobottom control of computing everywhere; they're determined to have it all,
forever and ever, amen (2004). This mistrust of monopolistic power has, in
recent years, been brought to bear on Google, albeit with a more ambivalent
attitude than that displayed towards Microsoft 36. Digital liberties activists have
raised concerns over the possibility that Google's Book Search settlement
would give Google a monopoly over the largest digital library of books in the
world (Samuelson 2009; von Lohmann 2009). Activists have also raised
concerns about Google's ability to act as a gatekeeper for Internet searches,
although Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales' attempts to develop an open
source search engine alternative to Google have foundered (ABC News 2009).
Work by activists within the DLM plays a vital role in raising awareness of, and
resisting, the emergence of digital monocultures.
The preservation of diversity is important to the GJM both as an intrinsic good
and instrumentally. The importance of diversity has been elaborated in
Alternatives to Economic Globalization (Anderson et al. 2004), a report that
gathers the ideas of many activists and academics aligned with the GJM. The
co-authors of this work argue that, Diversity is key to the vitality, resilience, and
innovative capacity of any living system. So too for human societies, going on
to identify cultural, economic, and biological diversity as vital aspects of diversity
(2004, 89). Instrumentally, the preservation of diversity creates spaces in which
alternatives to the dominant neoliberal system can be explored. Shiva argues
that The disappearance of diversity is also a disappearance of alternatives
and gives rise to the TINA (there is no alternative) syndrome (5, 1993). This
syndrome can be resisted through the development and presentation of
alternatives, whether these are embodied in a multiplicity of agricultural systems
or of operating systems. They also provide resources that may allow activists to
36

Siva Vaidhyanathan has been documenting Google's expansion and its effects on his blog,
The Googlization of Everything (2009).

189

build alternatives. In the case of the Indian movement, the availability of a

diverse range of seeds that are suited to local conditions preserves a space
apart from the increasingly integrated and homogenising world food system,
allowing those who participate in alternative food production some autonomy.
The DLM, in turn, provides resources that may be taken up by activists,
including software that remains outside the control of corporate power. The
value of digital diversity to the GJM has gone unrecognised. In attempting to
preserve diversity online, to save spaces for the voices of bloggers and amateur
coders, the DLM is also preserving space for those whose voices are underrepresented in the mainstream media and in the corridors of power.
These struggles are just two of the many which attempt to preserve meaningful
diversity in a world where diversity has increasingly come to mean a choice
between twenty different kinds of toothpaste. There are others, of course,
including those exploring alternative ways of providing shelter (such as the
cooperative housing and squatter movements), alternatives to the capitalist
economy (such as those experimenting with reputation or barter economies),
and alternatives to current domestic food systems (such as those experimenting
with freeganism). While not all sections of the DLM would position their activism
as part of the opposition to neoliberalism, their work nevertheless helps to argue
for the value of diversity in the face of claims that neoliberal capitalism has the
answerand it is the same answer all around the world.

Resisting enclosure
The work of each of these movements echoes that of the other, and of the
GJM's overall project, through attempts made to resist enclosure and preserve
the commons. As I outlined in Chapter One, one of the unifying themes within
the GJM is resistance to the privatisation and commodification of life. This
resistance has the potential to serve as a basis for further alliances between the
DLM and left-wing movements within the GJM. The DLM, the Indian opposition
to GM crops, and the GJM as a whole have all adopted frames which highlight
the importance of the commons, and projects which resist the enclosure of the
commons run through each movement. Resistance to enclosure reinforces
other contributions that the DLM and opposition to GM crops make to
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globalisation from below. For example, the task of resisting enclosure within the
Indian movement is closely related to attempts to preserve diversity, as
monocultures in agriculture are also associated with commercialising resources
previously held in common, including seeds.
The Indian movement's contributions to resisting the enclosure of the commons
are manifold. Indian anti-GM activists have played a prominent role in
advocating for the importance of the commons, and have provided strong
arguments in support of communities' rights to hold certain resources in
common. Vandana Shiva, in particular, has played a huge role in this fight.
Shiva (2008) outlines the struggle against the enclosure of seeds and of
traditional knowledge as having three parts, worth quoting at length:
The first step is challenging it as a moral and ethical issuein the same
way as the slave trade was challenged on the grounds that it's unethical
to trade people. You can't pirate knowledge; it's illegitimate, and shouldn't
be done. The second step is to develop methods of rejuvenating people's
knowledge, of making sure that people regain confidence in their own
knowledge so that biodiversity and knowledge is kept in the common
domain. The third involves working on legal alternatives. One of the
movements we have developed is to say that, just as intellectual property
rights protect the inventions of individuals, common rights are needed to
protect the common intellectual heritage of indigenous peoples. These
are rights that are recognized through the Convention on Biological
Diversity. We are working to make sure that they become foundations of
our jurisprudence.
This combination of framing enclosure as a moral issue, reinvigorating the
public domain, and developing common legal rights runs through the Indian
opposition to GM crops.
Strategies such as those listed above by Vandana Shiva hit at the legal regimes
and social attitudes that allow enclosure of the commons. There are also a
number of strategies that are based on a more direct resistance to such
enclosure. The most notable of these is, perhaps, piracy of enclosed
191

resources. Shiva (2008) argues that the commercialisation of previously

common resources means that, [e]very farmer must go to the seed industry
every year to buy their seed and pay an 80 percent royalty to a corporation. [...]
Or, if you need a biological pest control, you can no longer use the new seed in
your back yard. Instead you have to depend on the Grace Corporation [one of
the large MNCs that produces pesticides] or some other entity. However, as
both Gandhi's Salt Satyagraha in defiance of British salt monopolies (Shiva
2008) and the wide-scale piracy of GM cotton discussed in Chapter Two show,
resources that are in theory under private (or government) control may
nevertheless be accessed widely by others. Resistance to enclosure of
traditional knowledge and seeds through open or hidden subversion of
intellectual property rights has not hitherto played a significant role within the
Indian anti-GM movement, presumably in large part because GM crops are
seen as undesirable and patents on more desirable crops and medicinal plants
have been successfully challenged in court. However, more research into this
form of resistance to enclosure of the commons within the movement may
provide useful results.
The DLM also places a very strong emphasis on the commons, and particularly
on the public domain. Boyle argues that the public domain is the basis for our
art, our science, and our self-understanding. It is the raw material from which
we make new inventions and create new cultural works (2008, 39). More than
this,
[o]ur markets, our democracy, our science, our traditions of free speech,
and our art all depend more heavily on a public domain of freely available
material than they do on the informational material that is covered by
property rights. The public domain is not some gummy residue left
behind when all the good stuff has been covered by property law. The
public domain is the place we quarry the building blocks of our culture. It
is, in fact, the majority of our culture (Boyle 2008, 40-41).
This argument is common within the DLM, and the necessity of having access
to material in the public domain has been continually cited by activists as vital to
democracy and to cultural innovation (cf. Lessig 2004; Gaylor 2009). Raising
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awareness of the importance of the public domain is an important part of the

DLM's work.
James Boyle calls explicitly for a movement to protect the public domain, and
argues that such a movement is currently at the stage that the environmental
movement was at in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s. Boyle
writes that activism is emerging around a number of disparate issues
surrounding intellectual property, just as environmental activism emerged in the
1950s and 1960s in the US around particular areas and issues. He sees a
necessity for the development of a general framework, a perception of common
interest in apparently disparate situations (Boyle 2008, 239). I have argued in
Chapter Three that this general framework is now emerging: the DLM's
prioritisation of user control over the digital domain links not only disparate
issues related to the public domain, but also other struggles over ICTs.
Boyle has suggested a strategy for the movement, drawing on lessons from the
environmental movement. Boyle calls for a cultural environmentalism, an
environmentalism of the mind, and notes that such a movement has actually
begun to emerge (2008, 241). This movement is beginning to perform a
semantic reorganization of conceptions of the public domain (Boyle 2008,
242), and activists within it are working to bring attention to the importance of,
and threats to, the public domain through writing, protests, lobbying, and other
means. Activism around the public domain is also linked to other issues within
the DLM. For example, many arguments against DRM note that technological
restrictions on copying material make no allowance for fair use or for the
expiration of copyright. Boyle, who is a founding member of DLM organisations
Creative Commons and Science Commons, suggests adopting a strategy that
works to resist the enclosure of the public domain, and this is now being
adopted within the DLM.
As in the case of the Indian movement, activists from the DLM have engaged in
a number of strategies that defy the enclosure of the commons in concrete
ways. Creative commons and other copyleft licenses are one such example:
they do not rely on changing society's perception of the public domain, nor do
they require changes to the legal system of copyright. Instead, they are what
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Boyle calls a private hack to produce a more finely-tuned copyright structure,

to replace all rights reserved with some rights reserved, and therefore to
create a global commons of material [...] open to all, as long as they are
willing to abide by the terms of use (2008, 183). Sharing copyrighted material
online is another method of resisting the enclosure of the public domain within
the gates of intellectual property, and is illegal rather than legal as copyleft
licenses are.
Both the DLM and the Indian opposition to GM crops make important
contributions to the GJM through their resistance to enclosure of the commons.
Firstly, the role that activists from these movements are playing in creating
support for the commons as an idea is vital. The concept of holding resources in
common has been battered by neoliberal ideology, which proclaims that efficient
use of resources can only be ensured by privatisation. In contrast to this,
activists from the movements discussed here have argued that communities are
effective at managing resources held in common, and that many benefits come
from preserving some resources in common. Secondly, resources held in
common are vital to building globalisation from below, including traditional
knowledge and seeds. Similarly, preserving cultural content within the public
domain makes a wide range of material available for activists to learn from, as
well as to reuse and remix in order to spread their message.

Conclusion
Existing studies of the GJM have tended to simplify the movement, stripping
away its complexities by focusing either on movement events such as protests
or on NGOs within the movement. Such simplification serves an important
purpose, allowing scholars to untangle the vast number of interwoven threads
that make up the movement. Unfortunately, this means that important aspects
of the movement are often overlooked, or passed over only briefly. I have
attempted, in this chapter, to show some of the complexity that is often elided in
studies of the GJM. Both the DLM and the Indian opposition to GM crops
overlap with the GJM, but the relationship between each movement and the
GJM is not easily mapped, nor is it stable. Nevertheless, both the DLM and the
Indian movement make vital contributions to the GJM. In analysing these
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issues, I have attempted to add to the literature on the GJM, and to social
movements more generally, in two important respects.
Firstly, I have highlighted the difficulties involved in studying the GJM and the
value of maintaining a conceptual framework that is open to complexity and
uncertainty. It would be impossible to recognise many of the contributions that
these movements make to the project of building globalisation from below were
we to work within a simplistic understanding of the GJM. It is only by
recognising it as constituted from a wide variety of struggles, and as having
blurred and shifting borders, that we can understand the role of actors at the
fringes of the GJM, as well as those with clearly defined positions within the
movement. The World Social Forum, the Zapatistas, anti-WTO actions, and
other such spaces, actors, and events, have a well-defined role within the GJM
and present objects for study that have an attractive clarity. Movements such as
the two discussed here have a more unclear relationship to the GJM, and I have
attempted to map this relationship without sweeping its complexity under the
carpet. In doing so, I wish to emphasise the value of bringing scholarly attention
to bear on more untidy elements of the GJM, and to social movements more
generally, as well as those that yield to easy categorisation.
The Indian opposition to GM crops has long been a poster-child for the GJM,
while the DLM has barely registered on the radar of prominent activist or
scholarly accounts of the GJM. In many ways, positioning the Indian movement
within the GJM is unproblematic: for example, activists within the Indian
movement identify themselves as part of the GJM, GJM texts regularly refer to
the Indian movement, and activists from the Indian movement take part in GJM
events. Nevertheless, resource constraints and nationalist discourse separate
the Indian movement from the GJM and lead to fragile connections between
Indian activists and those in other parts of the world. In contrast to this, the
relatively privileged demographic that makes up the DLM have the capacity to
sustain international connections, but have not on the whole created the same
close connections with the GJM that Indian activists have. Nevertheless, there
is still a significant overlap between the DLM and the GJM, as shown by the
existence of groups which provide support for GJM activists and the support

195

voiced by GJM and DLM activists' for each others' projects. Both the DLM and
the Indian opposition to GM crops have a complex relationship to the GJM.
Despite this, both the DLM and the Indian opposition to GM crops make vital
contributions to the GJM's project. The second contribution to the literature on
the GJM has been to argue for the importance of struggles over knowledge to
the movement's struggle to build globalisation from below. Both case-study
movements make concrete and important contributions to the GJM's project
through their struggles to establish democratic control over key technologies, to
preserve diversity in the face of spreading monocultures, to preserve peerbased knowledge systems, and to resist enclosure of the commons. The
localised and/or issue-specific struggles carried out by the DLM and Indian
movement have had wider significance, tying into and supporting the GJM's
work. Struggles over knowledge are another important thread running through
the GJM: they play a vital role in building globalisation from below, and they are
an important part of many of the local struggles within the GJM. It is hoped that
this work will encourage further scholarship examining the role of struggles over
knowledge in other parts of the GJM.

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Conclusion
This thesis has argued that struggles over knowledge make vital contributions
to the GJM's attempts to build alternatives to neoliberal globalisation. These
contributions are not always straightforward: the GJM has no central
organisation, manifesto, or blueprint for the world that GJM participants are
trying to bring into being. The alternatives it presents are therefore built from the
sum of many struggles, small and large, by actors distributed throughout the
world. At times, these struggles are explicitly framed as part of the GJM's
project. More often, they address issues that are more local or more narrow
than the broad goal of global justice. Nevertheless, these struggles are
connected through a global network of activism and, most importantly, by a
shared commitment to the creation of a more democratic and diverse world, in
which communities, rather than corporations, control essential resources.
Analysis of the Indian opposition to GM crops and the DLM has demonstrated
the importance of struggles over knowledge to the GJM.
The first chapter of this thesis provided the conceptual framework for the
analysis, outlining the relationship between neoliberal globalisation, the GJM,
and struggles over knowledge. It began with an analysis of the connection
between science, technology, and the flow of information, arguing that these are
interlinked aspects of knowledge rather than separate phenomena. Knowledge
needs to be understood in the context of other systems of power: knowledge is
both shaped by and constitutes social, political, and economic power structures.
This was demonstrated with reference to the rise of neoliberal globalisation,
which has been supported in part by particular scientific narratives and
technological changes. At the same time, neoliberal globalisation has shaped
the development of science, technology, and knowledge more generally,
supporting some knowledge systems while undermining others. The rise of
neoliberal globalisation and its dominance over knowledge systems has not,
however, been complete. Technological changes have also facilitated the
emergence of the GJM, and GJM activists have developed strategies and
structures that make effective use of ICTs. GJM activists also rely on gaining
legitimacy for grassroots, embedded, and embodied knowledge systems.
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However, global elites have attempted to limit the democratising potential of

changes to knowledge systems and have started to take a variety of actions
aimed at regaining control over this domain, such as increasing surveillance of
online communications. Struggles over knowledge are therefore linked with, and
vital to, struggles to reshape globalisation.
The second chapter analysed the Indian opposition to GM crops, focusing on
the southern state of Karnataka, which has been the locus of significant
grassroots activism. The Indian movement has foregrounded the risks of GM
crops to producers, rather than to the environment or consumers, although risks
to the latter have also been discussed. This focus on producers is partly
attributable to the long history of strong farmers' movements in Karnataka: the
KRRS was one of the first actors to take up the anti-GM banner. The opposition
to GM crops has primarily been framed through reference to swadeshi (villagelevel self-sufficiency) and the opposition to neoliberal globalisation. A significant
part of the Indian anti-GM movement's work has also been directed at the need
to provide alternatives to GM crops, and to Green Revolution monocropping
more generally. It has also been associated with a slightly different framing of
the opposition to GM crops, mobilising ecofeminist or development discourses.
While those involved in the Indian anti-GM movement have achieved limited
success in their attempts to prevent the spread of GM crops in India, they have
made significant contributions to the national and international debate over
biotechnology and the patenting of life. Firstly, Indian activists have successfully
questioned the terms of the debate over GM crops, highlighting biases in the
pro-GM research and arguing for the value of alternative frameworks in
assessing the success of agricultural systems. This reframing of the debate has
opened up space for increased input from marginalised groups, including
activists themselves. Secondly, activists have refused to allow the incorporation
of biodiversity within the intellectual property framework, insisting that life
cannot be patented. Thirdly, activists have argued that informationboth the
information contained within seeds and information about GM cropsneeds to
remain freely accessible to agricultural communities. These contributions have
been vital interventions in debates over biotechnology and intellectual property.

198

The third chapter discussed the DLM, which has received very little attention
from social movement scholars. This movement is working to highlight the
political aspects of digital technologies, and retain democratic control over them.
The chapter began by providing evidence for my claim that a coherent
movement has coalesced around these issues. It then analysed the context
from which the DLM has emerged. In part, the DLM has been a response to
elite attempts to gain tighter control over the spaces opened up by ICTs and the
uses to which they are put. These attempts have manifested in a wide range of
actions, including increased surveillance of online spaces, changes to copyright
law, and the application of technological controls to particular devices. While the
DLM has in part been a reaction to these developments, it has also emerged
from the amalgamation and evolution of other movements and communities,
most notably the F/LOSS movement and hacker subcultures. This chapter
provided a definition and evaluation of an under-recognised movement that is
contesting issues of extreme importance to the GJM.
The fourth chapter synthesised discussion of the Indian opposition to GM crops
and the DLM with regard to the ways in which their struggles over knowledge
contribute to the GJM. The chapter began by exploring the relationship of each
case study movement to the GJM. Although the Indian opposition to GM crops
is in many senses a paradigmatic part of the GJM, closer examination of the
relationship between the Indian movement and the GJM shows that there are
important respects in which this relationship is fragile and strained. The Indian
movement lacks the resources to sustain international connections except at
the level of movement leaders, and the nationalist framing of its struggle at
times alienates it from other GJM activists. In contrast, while at first glance a
wide gulf exists between the DLM and the GJM, there are grounds for believing
that this has been bridged, and that connections between the DLM and GJM
are growing. Analysis of the complex relationship between the case-study
movements and the GJM provides a framework for understanding the way in
which these movements contribute to the GJM. It also aids in developing a
more nuanced understanding of the GJM as constituted from diverse struggles
which are not easily mapped. Bearing this in mind, the second part of the
chapter assesses the ways in which struggles over knowledge within the DLM
and Indian movement contribute to the GJM. Both case-study movements aid
199

the GJM's attempts to build alternatives to neoliberal capitalism through their

struggles to protect peer-based knowledge systems, preserve diversity, resist
enclosure, and retain democratic control over key technologies. These struggles
provide vital assistance to the GJM.

Contributions to the field

The primary contribution of this thesis to existing scholarship has been to
demonstrate that struggles over knowledge play a vital role in helping to support
and further attempts by GJM activists to resist neoliberal capitalism and build
more diverse, democratic, and sustainable forms of globalisation. Although the
contexts in which the DLM and the Indian opposition to GM crops are operating
are very different, there are clear and recognisable threads that run through
their work. These threads play an important role within the GJM, interweaving
with other struggles on diverse issues. The struggles over knowledge engaged
in by the DLM and the Indian anti-GM movement support other participants
involved in struggles that constitute the GJM, contributing to the creation of
alternatives to the current dominant political, social, and economic systems.
Without support for democratic control over important technologies, peer-based
knowledge systems, diversity, and communally-owned resources, the GJM
would be significantly impaired in its work. As I argued in Chapter One, control
over and access to Information Age technologies and knowledge systems are
vital to the work of the GJM. If these struggles over knowledge fail, there is a
chance that the GJM will not be able to retain its current decentralised form, and
GJM activists will lose access to many of the resources that are necessary for
their work. This focus on the importance of struggles over knowledge to the
GJM adds a vital dimension to existing scholarship on the GJM, and is my most
important contribution to the existing literature.
The second contribution that this thesis makes to the literature on social
movements and transnational social movements is the emphasis on the need to
recognise that social movements have fluid boundaries that cannot be easily
mapped. While this has been noted in existing literature on social movements,
for example in the tendency to refer to movement participants rather than
members, most studies do not directly engage with the issue. Instead, the
200

untidy borders of social movements are swept under the carpet either by
focusing on specific events or organisations, or by simply taking movement
borders for granted. This approach has its virtues, and certainly allows for a
high degree of conceptual clarity. However, at times it is useful to grapple more
directly with the issue.
In the case of this thesis, analysis of the complex relationship that both casestudy movements have with the GJM allows for a more nuanced understanding
of the way in which the GJM is constituted from diverse struggles throughout
the world. Examination of the Indian movement's relationship with the GJM has
shown that even those movements considered to be at the centre of the GJM,
as the Indian movement is, may not be as closely connected to the rest of the
GJM as is assumed. It may therefore be useful to resist a conceptualisation of
the GJM as having a strongly-connected centre and weakly-connected margins,
and instead think of the movement as constituted through decentralised and
often weakly-connected struggles across the world. Discussion of the DLM has
reinforced this, as it has been shown that even movements that do not achieve
significant visibility within the GJM may provide vital support to its work. This
analysis has contributed a conceptualisation of the movement as fragmented,
shifting, and consisting, in effect, entirely of margins, with no single, strong,
centre.
The third contribution that this thesis has made to the existing literature is the
addition of further research on the Indian movement against GM crops and the
DLM. I have added to the significant body of work that already exists on the
Indian movement through an in-depth analysis of the way in which activists
have framed their opposition to GM crops. I have also expanded upon the
existing literature by providing a deeper exploration of the relationship between
opposition to GM crops and promotion of alternatives to monocropping, as well
as of the relationship between the Indian movement and the GJM. My
discussion of the DLM is the clearest original contribution that this thesis makes
to existing literature on social movements. The DLM is bringing attention to new
issues that are relevant to scholars in a variety of fields, including social
movement scholarship. It displays characteristics that may provide new
challenges to existing theoretical models of social movements, including the use
201

of the Internet as the primary space in which the movement organises and
builds collective identity. My research and analysis of the case-study
movements' contributes additional analysis to scholars' understanding of these
movements, as well as of how they relate the GJM.
I am hopeful that as well as contributing to the academic literature, this work will
be relevant to GJM activists. In writing this thesis, I have drawn extensively on
activists' analyses of their own work and the issues that they are facing. I am
also deeply indebted to the Indian activists who took the time to talk to me and
allowed me to observe and participate in their work, as well as to Christian
Engstrm of the Swedish Pirate Party and to the countless WSF participants
who I spoke to. The activists whose work and time I have drawn on will each
disagree with some of what I have argued here, but I am also optimistic that this
thesis makes useful contributions to global justice activism by highlighting the
importance of struggles over knowledge to the GJM, as well as to the more
issue-specific struggles being undertaken by the DLM and Indian opposition to
GM crops.
Throughout this thesis I have argued that more recognition is due for the
importance of struggles over knowledge to the GJM: this injunction is as
relevant to activists as it is to social movements scholars, and is my most
important message to GJM activists. Additionally, in highlighting the
contributions that the DLM is making to the GJM's project, and the common
themes that run through both digital liberties activism and the Indian opposition
to GM crops, I hope to encourage a strengthening of existing links between the
DLM and the GJM. Finally, I hope that my discussion of the DLM and the Indian
opposition to GM crops will contribute to activists' understandings of their
movements, the work they are doing and the tactics that they employ.
I hope that my research is relevant for activists because the end of history has
not arrived, and we are not living in the best of all possible worlds. Although the
worst effects of the global financial crisis seem to have been avoided, at least
momentarily, in Australia, the latest round of financial instability has highlighted
the fragility of the current incarnation of capitalism. The effects of the global
financial crisis on the poorest sections of the population in developed nations
202

has also reinforced the message that neoliberal globalisation does not, in fact,
benefit everyone equally. For many, even in the developed nations, neoliberal
globalisation has contributed to significant hardships and instability. In addition
to this, the current form of capitalism (and quite possibly all forms of capitalism)
are beginning to place an incredible strain upon our planet's ability to sustain
the conditions which humans have adapted to. It is therefore essential that we
look for alternatives to dominant political and economic systems.
Global justice activists are working to build alternatives to the current system. It
is possible that the reader will not agree that the alternatives proposed by the
GJM are better than what we have now, or that they are the best options
available. Nevertheless, even those who disagree with the movement's work
must recognise the importance of GJM activists' attempts to bring about
widespread, systemic change. Given this, it is vital that scholars strive to
understand how the GJM is structured, the alternatives that it is proposing, and
its tactics and strategies. My work makes a significant contribution to this project
in its exploration of a vital aspect of the movement's work: struggles over
knowledge.

Directions for further research

More research into both the DLM and the Indian movement is required. This
analysis has highlighted the important contributions that both case-study
movements make to the GJM, as well as to the context in which each
movement is working. The DLM continues to receive limited attention in the field
of social movement scholarship, and is a crucial period of development. Given
the importance of the movement's work, both in itself and in terms of how it will
affect other social movements, this elision is regrettable. The Indian movement
against GM crops also requires further research. As was briefly discussed in
Chapter Two, 2009 saw increasing attempts to mobilise a middle-class
demographic in the struggle against GM crops in Karnataka. More research into
how this movement is changing, and particularly research into the involvement
of educated professionals, will help to give greater insight into how social
movements are affected by the processes of globalisation. While there is
certainly a place for Northern researchers in this area, the importance of
203

research carried out by those who understand the context and can speak the
language(s) must be emphasised. Both movements are likely to change
considerably over coming years, and further work will be needed to ensure that
research on each movement is kept relevant and up-to-date.
As well as further research into these movements, understanding of the
importance of struggles over knowledge to the GJM should be expanded by
further investigation of other movements working in related areas. This analysis
has shown the importance of the DLM and the Indian movement against GM
crops to the GJM: these movements are not the only ones contributing to the
GJM in this way. People's science movements, appropriate technology
movements, freedom of information movements, and activism emerging around
nanotechnology are, among many other struggles, also playing a role. Studies
of the relationship of these movements to the GJM's attempts to create change
are essential.
Finally, while the focus of this thesis has been on struggles over knowledge, it is
the link between these struggles and material conditions that is most vital. As
argued in Chapter Four, struggles over knowledge have effects on, and are
affected by, very real struggles over political control that have serious and farreaching implications for the distribution of power throughout the world. Debates
about intellectual property law, the structure of the Internet, or GM technology
are important insofar as they relate to people's ability to access the resources
necessary to have meaningful control over their own lives. It is vital, therefore,
to see these struggles as always connected to the ongoing struggle over, for
example, agricultural land reforms in India and the environmental and labour
conditions under which electronic goods are produced. More research into the
material effects of these struggles is therefore urgently required.

Struggles over knowledge are not the only important aspect of the GJM, but
they nevertheless play a key role in the movement's work. The DLM and the
Indian movement against GM crops are, through their struggles, strengthening
the GJM and contributing to efforts by global justice activists to resist enclosure
of the commons and create a more diverse and democratic world. The future of
204

these movements, and of the GJM as a whole, remains uncertain. We are living
in uncertain times, and each movement discussed here is opposed by a number
of powerful actors and entrenched elites. Their success or failure will have
important repercussions, not only for the activists involved and the issues that
they are directly addressing, but also for the world as a whole.

205

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