Abstract
This chapter explores a second emerging dimension of democratic subjectivities in Argentina and Brazil: networking. I argue that networking practices forge a process of “horizontal deliberation by default”1 through a) the opening of a multiplicity of forums and b) the establishment of a delimiting discursive boundary that determines connecting and disconnecting nodes, regulating norms of integration and exclusion. In addition, networking is performed as contentious action insofar as it reveals public deliberation mechanisms outside the politico-institutional framework. It contributes therefore to the complex process of the formation of the “we of the radical democratic forces.”2
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Notes
Chantal Mouffe, “Democratic Politics Today,” in Dimensions of Radical Democracy: Pluralism, Citizenship and Community, ed. Chantal Mouffe (London: Verso, 1992): 3.
Networks as seen in this chapter are basically constructed by practical negotiations, compromises, and agreements across organizations (empirically referred in the form of campaigns), on the one hand, and discursive forms of structuration, on the other. The notion of “discursive frontier” therefore frames this second constitutive element of networking dynamics as I see them functioning in case studies. David Howarth, Discourse (Buckingham, UK: Open University Press, 2000).
Wellman 1988, in Mario Diani, “Introduction: Social Movements, Contentious Action, and Social Networks: ‘From Metaphor to Substance’?,” in Social Movements and Networks: Relational Approaches to Collective Action, ed. Mario Diani and Doug McAdam(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003): 1.
Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010).
Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Stikkimk, “Transnational Advocacy Networks in the Movement Society,” in The Social Movement Society: Contentious Politics for the New Century, ed. David S. Meyer and Sidney Tarrow (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998): 235.
Alfred P. Montero, Brazilian Politics (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005): 83.
Iram Jacome Rodrigues, Sindicalismo E Politica: A Trajetoria Da Cut (São Paulo: Edição Sociais LTDA, 1997);
Margaret E. Keck, The Workers’ Party and Democratization in Brazil (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992).
Maria da Gloria Cohn, “Os Movimentos Sociais No Brasil a Partir Dos Anos 1990,” in Cemocracia, Crise E Reforma: Estudos Sobre a Era Fernando Enrique Cardoso, ed. Maria Angela D’Incao and Herminio Martins (São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 2010): 331.
Ana Cecilia Dinerstein, “Beyond Crisis. The Nature of Political Change in Argentina,” in The Politics of Imperialism and Counterstrategies, ed. P. Chandra, A. Ghosh, and R. Kumar (New Delhi: Aakar Books, 2004): 264.
Arturo Fernández, “Las Transformaciones Del Estado Y De Su Politica Laboral,” in Estado YRelaciones Laborales: Transformaciones Y Perspectivas, ed. Arturo Fernández (Buenos Aires: Prometeo, 2005).
Eduardo Basualdo, Sistema Político Y Modelo De Acumulación (Provincia de Buenos Aires Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, 2001).
Victoria Murillo, “La Adaptación Del Sindicalismo Argentino a Las Reformas De Mercado En La Primera Presidencia De Menem,” Desarrollo Económico 38, no. 147 (1997); Sebastián Etchemendy, “Old Actors in New Markets: Transforming the Populist/Industrial Coalition in Argentina, 1989–2001,” in Argentine Democracy: The Politics of Institutional Weakness, ed. Maria Victoria Murillo and Steven Levitsky (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005). The Obras Sociales is a system of health-care insurance dependent on wage labor, the provision of which is under federal government legislation and resources control and of which the service delivery is run under the administration of trade unions. Although the system is governed by the principle of solidarity (the more you earn, the more you pay, getting in return the same health service), its provision is dependent on formal employment relationships, that is, excluding those either unemployed or in an informal work, who have to rely on the public health-care system.
Mirta Lobato and Juan Suriano, La Protesta Social En La Argentina (Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 2003): 136.
Martin Armelino, “Resistencia Sin Integración: Protesta, Propuesta Y Movimiento En La Acción Colectiva Sindical De Los Noventa. El Caso De La Cta,” in Tomar La Palabra: Estudios Sobre Protesta Social Y Acción Colectiva En La Argentina Contemporánea, ed. Federico Schuster et al. (Buenos Aires: Prometeo, 2005).
De Gennaro actually titled his written contribution “No hay lucha sin un pensamiento que lo proyecte.” It was included in the edited book, which compiled memories of the first meeting for the new thinking and passionately argued in favor of breaking neoliberal ideological corsets by talking about what “they do not want us to talk about.” Victor De Gennaro, “No Hay Lucha Sin Un Pensamiento Que Lo Proyecte,” in Primer Encuentro Nacional Por Un Nuevo Pensamiento: El Trabajo Y La Politica En La Argentina De Fin De Siglo, ed. Claudio Lozano (Buenos Aires: EUDEBA, 1999): 392.
IMFC et al., “Democracia, Estado Y Desigualdad: Movimiento Cooperativo,” in Segundo Encuentro Nacional Por Un Nuevo Pensamiento: Democracia, Estado Y Desigualdad, ed. Claudio Lozano(2000): 199.
Claudio Lozano, ed. Primer Encuentro Nacional Por Un Nuevo Pensamiento: El Trabajo Y La Política En La Argentina De Fin De Siglo (Buenos Aires: EUDEBA, 1999); Segundo Encuentro Nacional Por Un Nuevo Pensamiento: Democracia, Estado Y Desigualdad (Buenos Aires: EUDEBA, 2000).
The document was published by the CTA, and it was circulated extensively during 2001. The national newspaper Página12 published regularly about the initiative and also circulated the proposal in one of its issues. A more recent account, including the original document in the appendix, can be found at CTA, “La Propuesta Del Frenapo,” in El Hambre De Un Pueblo: A 10 Años Del Frenapo, ed. Carlos Fanjul (La Plata: Producciones Malas Palabras, 2011).
Armando Boito, Andréia Galvão, and Paula Marcelino, “Brasil: O Movimento Sindical E Popular Na Década De 2000,” OSAL X, no. 26, Octubre (2009): 36.
Chantal Mouffe, “Democratic Citizenship and the Political Community,” in Dimensions of Radical Democracy: Pluralism, Citizenship, Community, ed. Chantal Mouffe (London and New Yourk: Verso, 1992).
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© 2014 Juan Pablo Ferrero
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Ferrero, J.P. (2014). Networking: Horizontal Deliberation by Default. In: Democracy against Neoliberalism in Argentina and Brazil. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137395023_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137395023_5
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