The Dictionary of Human Geography

and movements of civil society that are
opposed to neo-liberalism and to domination
of the world by any capital or any form of
imperialism’ (see http://www.wsf.org)..) The WSF
has grown substantially from its first meeting
in Brazil. Subsequent meetings in 2002 and
2003 were also held in Porto Alegre, and
thereafter in Mumbai (2004), Porto Alegre
(2005) and Nairobi (2007). In 2006 a ‘poly-
centric forum’ was held in Bamako (Mali),
Caracas (Venezuela) and Karachi (Pakistan).
In 2001, 12,000 people attended the WSF;
by 2007 the number had grown to 60,000
registered attendees, and 1,400 organizations
representing 110 countries. The WSF has also
prompted the establishment of a number of
regional fora – the Asian Social Forum, the
Mediterranean Social Forum, and in 2007 the
first US Social Forum – though not all of them
stand in a similar relation to the ‘parent body’.
The genealogy of the WSF is complex. The
fact that four of the WSF meetings have been
held in Porto Alegre – a city with strong con-
nections to the Brazilian Left and the Workers
Party, and the home to an innovative model of
local government and participatorydemoc-
racy(so-called participatory budgeting) – says
much about the broad ideological thrust of the
Forum. It stands ideologically againstneo-
liberalismand free marketcapitalism;itis
of the Left but it looks for new and different
models of economic and political organiza-
tion, drawing from a vast array of experiments
embracing the landless workers movements,
anti-dam struggles, indigenous peoples, and
anti-corporate and multilateral struggles. The
idea of a global convention of anti-capitalist
movements was in part driven by the desire
to provide a counterweight to the World
Economic Forum held every year in Davos,
and by the difficulty of organizing mass protest
in Switzerland capable of generating sufficient
media coverage to challenge the prevailing
hegemony of free market discourse and
practice. The protests against the World Bank
andinternational monetary fundannual
meetings in 1999 and thereafter – most notably
in Seattle, Genoa and Washington, DC – were
an important milestone in the move towards an
alternative forum for civic movements oppos-
ing unfettered capitalism around the world.
It is impossible, however, to understand
the WSF outside of the counter-revolution in
developmentthinking and, relatedly, the grow-
ing dominance of neo-liberalism (freemarkets,
freetrade,privatizationand state cutbacks).
The abandonment of Keynesian models of cap-
italist development – marked by the ascendancy

of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and

Helmut Kohl – and the rapid adoption of the

economic ideas associated with Friedrich von

Hayek and Milton Friedman and the Mont

Pelerin Society, had massive and direct implica-

tions for the globalsouth, beginning in the

1980s with the massive onslaught ofstruc-

tural adjustment and stabilization pro-

grammes. It was out of this combination of

‘economic reform’ (namely, the rapid liberaliza-

tion of state-led development), ‘shock therapy’

and in many places massive economic recession

(e.g. the early 1980s and the late 1990s) that the

plethora of movements, often arraigned against

the privatizations of various commons (see

primitive accumulation) arose. In contradis-

tinction to the triumphalism (and purported

inevitability) ofglobalizationthat dominated

the 1990s, the WSF stood for, in their own

language, ‘another world is possible’ rather than

‘there is no alternative’. In some circles, the

WSF is held up as a shining example of what

Hardt and Negri (2004) call ‘the multitude’.

Inevitably, a forum embracing a massive

heterogeneity of movements from around the

world must confront the problem of political

coherence and its strategic role. The WSF has

14 principles (laid out in Porto Alegre in

2001) as part of its Charter. These include

strong statements against ‘totalitarian’

approaches to economy, politics and develop-

ment, and a robust critique of corporate cap-

italist and global regulatory institutions such at

the world trade organization and the

IBRD. But in practice the WSF has never

functioned as a central or strategic decision-

making body, and has often run aground on

the reefs of political diversity. Popular move-

ments often stand very differently in relation-

ship to development than, for example, non-

governmental organizations (NGOs), and

there are no procedures as such for adopting

consensus statements or advocacies. As it has

grown in size and scope – and become some-

thing of a media event for visible anti-global-

ization celebrities (Tariq Ali, Vandana Shiva)

• the early radicalism of the first forum has
  been lost and dissipated. mw

Suggested reading

Leite (2005); Teivainen (2002). See also the offi-

cial home page at http://www.forumsocialmun

dial.org.br

World Trade Organization (WTO)Although

the idea of an international trade organization

was formulated in 1944 at Bretton Woods,

today’s World Trade Organization was only

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_W Final Proof page 812 31.3.2009 4:10pm

WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION (WTO)