Neoliberal Resistance

Globalizations June 2007, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp.
229 249
Researching Resistance to Neoliberal Globalization: Engaged Ethnography as Solidarity and Praxis
ANDREW MATHERS & MARIO NOVELLI
University of the West of England, UK,
University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
In this paper we investigate the process of carrying out ethnographic studies of organized resistance to neoliberal globalization. We do so by drawing upon the critical and public social science of Bourdieu and Santos, two highly inuential opponents of neoliberalism, and by utilizing Burawoys extended case method for the investigation of two instances of resistance. The rst is of a trade union, Sintraemcali, that has been engaged in a longstanding struggle over the introduction of neoliberal policies in the city of Cali in south-west Colombia. The second is of The European Marches against Unemployment, Job Insecurity and Social Exclusion. We then reect upon our approach to researching this resistance and conclude by identifying two key elements of engaged ethnography, solidarity and praxis, that together help provide new insights into the strategies and practices of social movement resistance to neoliberal globalization. ` En este documento investigamos el proceso de llevar a cabo estudios etnogracos sobre la resistencia organizada a la globalizacion neoliberal. Lo hacemos utilizando la ciencia social crtica y publica de Bourdieu y Santos, dos oponentes altamente inuyetes del neoliberalismo, y utilizando el metodo del caso ampliado de Burawoy, (ECM, por sus siglas en ingles) para la investigacion de dos ejemplos de resistencia. El primero es sobre un sindicato, Sintraemcali, que se ha involucrado en una lucha de larga duracon contra la introduccion de politicas neoliberales en la ciudad de Cali en el sudeste de Colombia. El segundo es sobre Las Marchas Europeas contra el paro, la precariedad y la exclusion. (Red EM, por sus siglas en ingles). Luego reexionamos sobre nuestro enfoque en la investigacion de esta resistencia y concluimos en la identicacion de dos elementos claves de etnografa comprometida, solidaridad y praxis, que juntas ayudan a proporcionas nuevos puntos de vista sobre las estrategias y practicas de la resistencia de los movimientos sociales a la globalizacion neoliberal.
Correspondence Address: Dr Andrew Mathers, School of Sociology, University of the West of England, Coldharbour Lane, Bristol, BS16 1QY, UK. Email: Andrew.Mathers@uwe.ac.uk; Dr Mario Novelli, Department of Human Geography, Planning & International Development, Universteit van Amsterdam, RoeterseilandBuilding G, Nieuwe Prinsengracht 130, 1018 VZ Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Email: M.Novelli@uva.nl 1474-7731 Print/1474-774X Online/07/02022921 # 2007 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14747730701345259
230 A. Mathers and M. Novelli

Introduction Following the failure of the social struggles in the period following 1968, and disillusionment with the socialist project, the dominant trend amongst radical academics was to retreat into the academy to develop what Bourdieu (2003) termed campus radicalism which eschewed engagement with social struggles. Meanwhile a new generation of right-wing academics provided the intellectual ammunition for the neoliberal counter-revolution and a wholesale assault on acquired social rights. This onslaught has had dire social consequences to which social scientists can bear witness, but it has also been met with new waves of protest across the globe with which radical academics can now re-engage. Indeed, academics are but one of a range of intellectuals whom Bourdieu (2003) asserts are indispensable to the successful development of contemporary social struggles. Michael Burawoy (2005) cites the vote of the American Sociological Association against the US invasion of Iraq as evidence of how sociologists have moved leftwards whilst the world has moved to the right resulting in increasing demands for a re-engaged public sociology. This, we believe, is an expression of a broader process of re-engagement amongst academics who share the aim of bringing innovation and indeed radical changes to bear in response to the multiple crises of our era (Gills, 2004, p. 5). Realizing this aim raises general issues relating to the various ways in which academics express their commitment. More specically, and our concern in this paper, is how academics can engage most appropriately and effectively with those movements that are the primary agents of global transformation. These matters have already begun to be addressed by contributors to Globalizations who have sought primarily to establish a real bridge between the academic world and the world of practice, the world of action (Gills, 2004, p. 2) by relating theory to practice so as to consider important strategic questions for alter-globalisation movements (Gills, 2004, p. 2). These contributions include: an analysis of how ATTAC can continue the balancing act of counter-hegemony so as to remain a core organization of the alter-globalization movement (Bircheld and Freyburg-Inan, 2004, p. 299); an evaluation of the possibilities for cooperation between labour and social movements in forming joint strategies against neoliberalism (Bieler and Morton, 2004a, p. 305); and a critical analysis of theories of transnational capitalism and new imperialism so as to inform the development of progressive politics within the alter-globalization movement (Kiely, 2005). These contributions are timely and welcome to both the academic and activist worlds. It is possible, however, to view them as interventions into the second from the standpoint of the rst. Our endeavour is to traverse both worlds through the development of roles such as activist-researcher. While we have a strong afnity with the principles for a dialogue between activism and critical globalization research outlined in a recent contribution to Globalizations, we do not regard political engagement and analytic objectivity as competing pulls (Johnston and Goodman, 2006, p. 1). We rather adopt Burawoys Extended Case Method (ECM), which rejects detachment, to construct a bridge between academia and activism akin to the third space (Routledge, 1996), whose content is a critically engaged approach to researching resistance to neoliberal globalization. Our research approach is concerned with investigating internal movement processes (Byrd, 2005) through an ethnographic approach able to focus on the micro-processes through which macroresistance (Mittelman, 2004) is actually constructed while embedding these processes in the macro-structural environment of neoliberal globalization. By practising this approach, we have produced insider accounts of how specic episodes of resistance are actually achieving inclusion, mass participation and internationalism as well as overcoming fragmentation while linking . . . the local level with the regional and the global (Gills, 2005, pp. 10 11).
Researching Resistance to Neoliberal Globalization 231

Our approach to researching resistance to neoliberalism is an engaged ethnography, the starting points for which are Burawoys work on public sociology, his ECM and its relationship more broadly to critical theory which we outline in section two. We also draw upon the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Boaventura de Sousa Santostwo critical public intellectuals who, alongside Burawoy, provide us with inspiration and theoretical and practical guidance for our actual ethnographic case studies of resistance to neoliberalism, an outline of which we present in section three. The rst study is of a public services trade union, Sintraemcali, which has been engaged in a longstanding struggle over the introduction of neoliberal policies in the southwest of Colombia. The key questions which this case study sought to address was how a small trade union with only 3,000 members was able to mobilize local, national and transnational support, and how it managed to overturn a process of privatization that had the full backing of local elites, the national government, the World Bank, the IMF (International Monetary Fund), and several key multinational corporations with all the economic, political and military power that this entailed. The second study is of The European Marches against Unemployment, Job Insecurity and Social Exclusion (EM Network). The central question posed was how and why did those organizations representing the most marginalized sections of society succeed in producing effective episodes of transnational resistance to the neoliberal EU where organized labour had largely failed. In section four, we extend out from these case studies to examine critically our own practices of engaged ethnography in the eld structured around Burawoys four categories of intervention, process, structuration and reconstruction. We conclude by highlighting two central tenets of this engaged ethnography: solidarity with research subjects and research praxis that produces insights into how the micro-processes of resistance are linked to a macro-analysis of neoliberal globalization thereby making a contribution to advancing such resistance. Developing an Engaged Ethnography of Resistance to Neoliberal Globalization In this section we outline a social scientic basis for engaged ethnography that is both intellectually critical and has a moral and political commitment to contributing to social change. We also start to show how this critical and committed approach could be operationalized through an outline of the ECM. For a Public and Critical Social Science In his recent work arguing for a return to public sociology, Burawoy (2004) develops a disciplinary matrix in which he locates four ideal types of sociology distinguished in terms of knowledge type and audience (Figure 1). This typology of sociology is a useful starting point for our engaged ethnography of resistance to neoliberal globalization in that it enables us to identify its basis in a social science that is both intellectually critical and oriented to intervention
Figure 1. Typology of sociology. Adapted from Burawoy (2004, p. 1607)

in the public sphere. For Burawoy, public sociology can be sub-divided into the categories of elite and organic/grassroots. Our approach clearly has an afnity with the latter in that it seeks to develop a dialogue with active and counter-hegemonic publics (Burawoy, 2004, p. 1607). Our work is also closely aligned with critical sociology in that the latter is characterized by a commitment to social and political change as a driving force of research. This leads us more broadly to the question of critical theory itself and the role of intellectuals therein.1 Our approach falls within the tradition of a humanistic Marxism. It builds on the Frankfurt Schools (see Horkheimer, 1982) critique of traditional theory and draws on the more recent work of the neo-Gramscian school in grappling with issues of neoliberal globalization and critique (see Bieler and Morton, 2004b, for an overview). Robert Cox, a foundational gure within neoGramscian thinking argues that, at a meta-level, there are two major ways of categorizing theory. The rst, problem-solving theory, takes the prevailing order as given and seeks to delineate and mark off the problem from its broader social relations. Because it takes the present as given, it does not seek to challenge the existing social order; rather its aim is to make this order run more smoothly and efciently. For that reason problem-solving theory has a built-in system bias in that it tries to generate solutions that make the system work better rather than challenging the system itself. The second approach, critical theory, begins by problematizing the problem itself, seeking to understand and locate it as a component within a far bigger and intimately connected picture. Cox (1996, p. 85) criticized academic conventions for dividing the totality of the social world into separate spheres in order to understand particular phenomena or events. For Cox, the danger is that knowledge of particular events is only a fragment of the social totality, and that it is necessary to seek to reintegrate that knowledge into the bigger picture so that it becomes the basis for constructing a structured and dynamic view of larger wholes (Cox, 1996, p. 85). A critical theory approach allows us to transcend the parameters of the problematic itself and provides the possibility of imagining alternatives to the status quo. While this does not mean that critical theory ignores problems and their possible solutions, what it does imply is that there is space for a normative approach that can seek out other possibilities. In that sense critical theory contains within it a utopian element, but this is grounded in an analysis of the possible. Cox argues that critical theory must reject improbable alternatives just as it rejects the permanency of the existing order, and in that manner it can act as a guide to strategic action for bringing about an alternative order (Cox, 1996, p. 87). Whilst placing our approach within both critical theory and public sociology, it is also centrally concerned with exploring the strategies and practices of resistance. For this reason we have sought intellectual guidance from critical theorists whose work has actively engaged with oppositional and subaltern movements. In this pursuit we have found the work of two prominent critical theorists, Pierre Bourdieu and Boaventura de Sousa Santos, to be of innite inspiration and utility. Bourdieu Pierre Bourdieu had a long and distinguished career as a critical theorist making outstanding contributions to a number of elds. However, becoming increasingly aware of the social consequences of neoliberal restructuring, Bourdieus status as a renowned critical sociologist became, in the last decade of his life, increasingly linked to a role as a public sociologist. For Bourdieu, this role took the form of declaring his support for those engaged in resistance to neoliberal restructuring. This was epitomized by his address to striking rail workers at the height of the public service workers strikes in 1995 whose struggle he declared was one Against the Destruction of a Civilisation (Bourdieu, 1998, pp. 24 28).

Bourdieus outlook on intellectual engagement nds its most developed expression in his nal published work in which he argues for a scholarship with commitment (Bourdieu, 2003, pp. 17 25). In this text he provides examples of both negative and positive functions for engaged intellectuals. Negative functions include providing a critique of the dominant discourses that underpin state restructuring. Bourdieu performed this function admirably by exposing such myths as the need to roll back the state in the face of the apparently inevitable processes of globalization (Bourdieu, 1998). For Bourdieu, one of the ways that intellectuals can full their positive function of contributing to the collective work of political intervention (Bourdieu, 2003, p. 21) is by undertaking investigations into the adverse social effects of neoliberal restructuring on peoples everyday lives. In this vein, Bourdieus call is reminiscent of C. Wright Mills (1963) invocation for sociologists to link private troubles to public ills. Bourdieu (1999) achieved such a link by providing accounts of the social suffering of a diversity of individuals produced by the retreat of the left hand of the state. Amongst the positive outcomes of this work were the voice in public life that it provided for the socially marginalized and its effect of demonstrating the common cause of diverse social suffering thereby countering the divisive effects of neoliberal policies. Bourdieus methodology was also exemplary in that he drew upon his sociological knowledge of the social conditions faced by each person interviewed while attempting to reduce the power relationship and generate solidarity between interviewer and interviewee. The result was an extraordinary discourse which afrmed the point of view of the most disadvantaged (Bourdieu, 1999, pp. 607 626). Another positive function for engaged intellectuals proposed and practised by Bourdieu (2003, p. 21) was to work closely with social movements to advance the collective production of realistic utopias. Bourdieu added his social weight not only to the movement of strikers in France in 1995, but also to the unemployed in France in 1997 and to the European Marches which he regarded as an exemplary case of social movement internationalism. Bourdieu (2003, p. 47) rejected a hierarchical model of the relationship between intellectual and social movements and proposed instead a more pragmatic approach that embraced mutual learning amongst intellectuals and activists while being based on common aspirations and convictions. This was the approach he adopted for the formation of the Estates General of the Social Movement that assembled researchers and activists and in Raisons dAgir, an international network of engaged intellectuals. Bourdieus outlook on intellectual commitment provides important insights and exemplary practices that can inform the development of an engaged ethnography of resistance to neoliberal globalization. In terms of the relationship between researcher and social movement, at the most general level solidarity can be developed around common values based in shared opposition to the social consequences of neoliberalism. This would result in a solidarity of citizens. More concretely, the researcher can also seek new ways of relating to, and working with, social movement activists so as to overcome existing divisions. In Bourdieus (2003, p. 47) words, the researcher is required to establish modes of communication and discussion of a new type with the researched. The researcher is also encouraged to assist social movements to enter the public sphere. This is a question of making the movements visible. This also raises, however, the vexed question of the possibilities and limits of social movements to achieve social and political change. Bourdieus work (1998, 1999) suggests a rejection of the doxosophy of much current professional and policy social science that seeks to recuperate resistance within the parameters of the neoliberal polity and discourse. By embracing critical and public social science the researcher opens up the research agenda to the alternatives emerging from the resistance itself.

Santos Boaventura de Sousa Santos is a transdisciplinary theorist and a public intellectual who has been at the centre of the process of constructing the World Social Forum (WSF). His extensive and wide-ranging corpus of work engages with pressing social and political questions of legality, social structures, institutions, utopias, social movements and social change which dees the disciplinary parochialism of our era (see Santos 1995, 1999a, 1999b, 2004a, 2004b). Santos (1999, p. 33) laments the fact that particularly in the North the social sciences have ceased to be a source of creative new thinking about society. Instead he argues that the most innovative ideas and practices are coming from both outside the North and outside of the academy, and suggests that it is in these sites that critical academics should be looking for new ideas and insights to reinvigorate social theory. One of these sites has been the emerging counter-hegemonic process of the WSF, and particularly its geographical home in Porto Alegre, Brazil (Santos, 2004a) and he has focused much of his recent academic and political work on thinking and acting within this sphere. In the academic domain Santos (1999a) talks of the need to move from knowledge as regulation to knowledge as emancipation and raises the question as to why, in a world so full of things to criticize, has it become so difcult to produce a critical theory within the social sciences. According to Santos, what we are faced with is a decline in both the paradigm of social regulation that has failed to bring progress to the majority of the worlds population, and a decline in the paradigm of social emancipation that now fails to offer a viable emancipatory alternative. For this reason, Santos argues, we are in a transition period where we are facing modern problems to which there are no modern solutions (Santos, 1999a, p. 36). In order to overcome this and begin the process of constructing knowledge as emancipation Santos (1999a, pp. 39 43) argues that there is a need to move away from the unitary focus on order in the hegemonic paradigm of knowledge as regulation which is focused upon controlling rebellious subjects. As the social sciences have become institutionalized, so order has become prioritized and solidarity downgraded, hence the reication of capital and the focus on power from above. Santos argues that knowledge as emancipation needs to redress this situation and return once again to a focus on rebellion and solidarity. In order to develop this sociology of rebellion and solidarity, Santos argues that we need to start by listening to the South (Santos, 1995, p. 506). The South is used metaphorically, regardless of geographical location, for the site inhabited by those suffering under global capitalism, and resisting it. He advocates a learning process whereby academics try to understand contemporary struggles through a process of critical engagement with those left out of the benets of neoliberal globalization. This necessitates a normative afliation with the South, though one that neither implies the simple dissolution of the social scientist into the activist nor keeps a distance between social science and activism (Santos, 1999a, p. 38). Secondly, Santos (ibid.) calls for a sociology of absences that uncovers the hidden histories and struggles of the resisting other and a sociology of emergences that charts possible alternative tendencies and counter-hegemonic futures. In this process Santos calls for a multicultural dialogue that forges a pathway towards communicating different knowledges, and creates spaces to hear different voices. Thirdly, in moving from mono-culturalism to multi-culturalism, a further major obstacle is that of difference, which requires a politics of translation. In the context of the emerging process of the WSF and its local and regional offshoots, Santos has posed the problem of how different groups coming from varied geographical locations, with different histories, objectives, trajectories and protest repertoires can come together, explore their

differences and conicts through dialogue, and in doing so forge unity on certain common issues (Santos, 1999b). He sees the contemporary situation as differing in two important respects from the postSecond World War era. Firstly, the intellectual focus was far more concentrated on the small geographical area of the North, and secondly the intellectuals saw themselves as the possessors of a privileged knowledge rooted in orthodox Marxism that purveyed the status of avante garde. Neither the geographical parochialism, nor the messianic role of the intellectuals are tenable today. The committed intellectual thus becomes in Santos terms a facilitator that eases contact among different experiences, different ideologies, different knowledges, different aspirations for social justice and democracy by bringing into the social movements cross-national comparisons and intercultural translation (Santos, 2004b, p. 160). In this process the committed intellectual is not searching for some abstract universalism but the possibility of a process of translation whereby aspirations for human dignity and social justice can be heard from different languages and different cultural and social vantage points. Santos suggests that new critical theories that promote social change can emerge out of this process (Santos, 2004b, pp. 147 60). The three processes of listening to the South, a sociology of absences and emergences and a politics of translation provide, simultaneously, both an ethical framework and a research agenda that guide our work on developing an engaged ethnography. Burawoys Extended Case Method: Linking the Macro and Micro in Engaged Ethnography Having drawn upon the work of leading critical public social scientists to develop an ethically committed and intellectually critical research approach to investigating resistance to neoliberal globalization, we now move on to developing an appropriate methodology. Our ethnographic approach2 stems from our aim of answering the how questions of our cases of organized resistance which we highlighted in the introduction. Our focus is on examining the processes through which resistance is produced, thereby identifying particular strategies and tactics and relating these to the framework of the current conjuncture of neoliberal globalization through which they are developed. Burawoys (1998, p. 4) ECM is therefore extremely appropriate in that it deploys participant observation to locate everyday life in its extralocal and historical context. For us, Burawoys ECM also provides a valuable framework for addressing the main criticisms of conventional ethnography3 from the perspective of critical theory, which are its value neutrality and its failure to consider the power effects of unequal social structures on peoples actions (Hammersley, 1992). Burawoys (2002) ECM is an engaged approach to ethnographic inquiry which locates each particular case within the unequally structured global political economy of capitalist society. Burawoy applies the reexive model of science to the research technique through which empirical data is generated (participant observation) to produce the research method of the extended case study. This reexive approach to research is not based in a positivist procedural notion of objectivity and rejects any attempt to detach the researcher from the research subjects and process. Instead it premises itself on intersubjectivity and embraces an engagement with the context effects that the positive approach eschews while acknowledging the power effects that such engagement may generate. Dialogue not detachment is the central principle of the reexive approach and the ECM seeks to link up the micro-practices under observation with the wider world through a process of dialogue at a range of levels.

It is dialogical in each of its four dimensions. It calls for intervention of the observer in the life of the participant; it demands an analysis of interaction within social situations; it uncovers local processes in a relation of mutual determination with external social forces; and it regards theory as emerging not only in dialogue between participant and observer, but also emerging among observers now viewed as participants in a scientic community. (Burawoy, 2002, p. 16)
The ECM therefore begins as a dialogue between researcher and participants (intervention) and then embeds this within a second dialogue between local and extra-local forces (process) while exploring these relationships (structuration). This process can then be understood through a dialogue with theory itself (reconstruction). It is this process that we seek to operationalize in relation to our investigation of specic instances of resistance to neoliberalism.
Engaged Ethnography in Action Case Study 1: Sintraemcali and the Movement against Privatization in Colombia Neoliberal structural reforms began in Colombia in the early 1990s and included the full gamut of liberalization, decentralization and privatization. Neoliberalism takes place within the context of a highly charged internal civil war which has meant that its implementation takes on a particularly notable militarized and violent form (Higginbottom, 2005). Since 1986 over 3,800 trade union activists have been assassinated and over 2 million people internally displaced. Far right paramilitaries, closely linked to the Colombian state are responsible for the vast majority of these assassinations and forced displacements (Human Rights Watch, 2000, 2001). Despite the repression, resistance to neoliberal globalization has been robust, particularly in relation to the privatization of public services. The focus of the research was on Sintraemcali, a trade union based in the south-west of Colombia that had successfully resisted a series of attempts by the national government to privatize water, electricity and telecommunications in Colombias second city of Cali. The research centred on one particular, and successful, protest episode: the 36-day occupation of the Centro Administrativo Municipal (CAM) Tower, their companys 17-oor central administration, that began on 25 December 2001.4 The occupation was triggered by the national governments decision to renew its attempts to privatize Empresas Municipales de Cali (EMCALI), the local utility provider. During the course of the 36-day occupation, tens of thousands of people went to meetings, joined marches, blocked off roads, and engaged in political protest in defence of EMCALI as a state-owned public utilities provider, with the vast majority drawn from the poorest neighbourhoods in the city. This local activity was complemented by solidarity actions both in Bogota, the capital, and in London. In Bogota, Sintraemcali workers and supporters occupied the headquarters of the Superintendent of Public Services5 for 14 hours while local public service trade unionists formed a protective cordon around the building. In London, pickets outside the Colombian embassy were organized on several occasions and two live video link-ups were made between leaders of the British Trade Union Congress (TUC) and workers inside the occupation. During key moments of the dispute, interventions were made either via letters to the Colombian government and/or face-to-face meetings with Colombian diplomats by a range of international trade union and social organizations. Furthermore, messages of solidarity for the occupation were received by email from as far away as Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and the Philippines. Novellis research set out to uncover the processes that had led to the emergence of this dynamic resistance movement.

What the research found was that during the previous ve years the trade union had transformed itself from a corporate trade union ghting for the particular interests of its members to a social movement union that linked up poor community-based consumers and trade unions and operated on a range of scales from the local to the global. Through reconceptualizing trade union education, Novelli argued that this strategic transformation was a pedagogical process that had fundamentally altered the ethos of the organization. This strategic pedagogy had facilitated the development of a multi-scalar agenda that included: (1) an alternative economic strategy and blueprint for the efcient management of EMCALI, which led in 2001 to a situation of dual control within the company between workers and the state; (2) a trade union/community alliance that linked local marginalized communities with organized labour; (3) a mobilization strategy that focused on occupations of strategic buildings and mass mobilizations; and (4) a human rights strategy that accessed local, national and international legal and advocacy mechanisms facilitating Sintraemcalis ability to globalize opposition to privatization. This multi-scalar and multi-dimensional strategy provided a formidable and comprehensive response to the material, discursive and military strategies of those social forces attempting to push through the privatization of EMCALI. Novelli saw the research as enabling him to act as both witness to the hidden story of Colombia, as part of a sociology of absences (Santos, 1999a) and to contribute towards transforming the current state of affairseven if in only a small way. He had a very clear idea that the research was a process rather than just a product, and that he wanted to contribute in some way to the struggles of those people he was researching. From the outset he engaged in practical solidarity work (translating documents, organizing meetings, advocacy work) with sections of the Colombian exile community based in London, UK and with trade union and political activists in Colombia, alongside more theoretical work. He also became a founding member of the Colombia Solidarity Campaign (CSC). These activities and contacts later led to involvement with Sintraemcali and to one year of ethnographic eldwork based in Cali, where he worked and lived with union activists and actively participated in the 36-day occupation. Upon arriving in Cali he set about carrying out whatever duties the trade union thought might be useful, while simultaneously seeking to develop greater background knowledge of the nature of the relationship between neoliberal reforms, social movements and the state in Colombia. During this early period, his role in Sintraemcali was to translate and transmit information about the situation in Sintraemcali and their long struggle against privatization and he worked his way through documents from 7am until late at night. In the rst few months many leading activists were sceptical of his presence there, particularly those working in the human rights ofce of the union. His solution was just to keep working and over the months they began to warm to him and to take him out with them whenever they went to different parts of the city to gather data, interview the victims of human rights abuses and train local activists. Very quickly he became immersed in the human rights situation in the city and experienced a steep learning curve under the mentoring of the human rights team. As trust developed, Novelli became responsible for maintaining and expanding contacts with a whole range of international trade union and human rights organizations. He gained experience in working with a range of different community organizations and acted as a translator for several delegations that came from the UK, Canada and the USA. He also had privileged access to a range of meetings: the weekly meeting of the unions leadership, the regular meetings of the Sintraemcali delegates from the different work sites, and the general workers assemblies. This access proved crucial to the development of a comprehensive rst-hand understanding of the unions development and provided a solid basis upon which to build theory.

In addition, Novelli was gathering crucial knowledge and information relating to the broader context of the conict between social movements and the state in Colombia, whilst learning this from the perspective of those who were directly opposing the neo-liberal economic reforms as they manifested themselves in Colombia. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, his own personal involvement and presence within the union resulted in a process of bonding between himself and his colleagues, breaking down the barriers that existed between them. This trust was solidied when he joined the occupation and this was the moment at which he felt fully accepted as part of the movement. This was crucial in a situation of violent conict such as exists in Colombia, where state and para-state organizations attempt to undermine solidarity between people through a politics of fear and suspicion. Sintraemcali itself has lost 17 members to assassination since the process of union transformation began in the mid-1990s. From inside the occupation, Novelli set about documenting the event through writing a daily eyewitness account that tried to inform the international community of what was going on. This was distributed through the CSCs email list and also through a range of labour, human rights and anti-globalization networks.6 At the same time he worked on translating key documents and urgent actions to be sent via the same networks at different times during the occupation, liaising with various international labour representatives via email and phone. He also translated directly from the CAM Tower the words of leaders and activists during several live videoconferences between UK trade union leaders and Sintraemcali. When the occupation ended, Novelli returned to England to talk at a range of meetings about the story of the occupation which had garnered a great deal of interest amongst the British trade union movement and the political left. Moving from Colombia to the UK allowed him to witness both sides of the relationship of solidarity that had been built up. Returning to Colombia in March 2003 he continued to work in the human rights department, engage in a range of human rights training courses, and carry out interviews. It was also during this period that he was involved in the production of a 30-minute video of the occupation which was a crucial dialogical tool through which to engage with local leaders and activists and also a mechanism through which international solidarity was built up. While the research project is now completed, Novelli continues to work in solidarity with Sintraemcali and other social movements in Colombia. Case Study 2: The European Marches Network against Unemployment, Job Insecurity and Social Exclusion The origins of the EM Network were in the seismic movement against the social consequences of European integration along neoliberal lines that found its epicentre in France. The strikes of 1995 mobilized millions of organized workers alongside organizations of marginalized groups (les sans)7 and found international support with rallies in Rome, Athens and Berlin. These rallies demonstrated the international character of the resistance to neoliberalism and the will to mobilize across borders. The proposal for a European March came from representatives of the French unemployed association Agir Ensemble Contre le Chomage! (Act Together Against Unemployment) and was eagerly taken up by grassroots unions and associations across Europe. Although it was generally accepted that the strict convergence criteria for European Monetary Union were a major cause of economic and social problems, it was agreed to focus the marches on the massive levels of unemployment (20 million) and poverty (60 million) in the European Union. The marches snaked their way across the Continent for two months before converging in Amsterdam to head a 50,000 strong demonstration on the occasion

of the EU summit meeting in June 1997. The EM Network has subsequently organized two further marches to EU summit meetings in Cologne in 1999 and in Seville in 2002. It has also convened several international gatherings under the title of European Assembly of the Unemployed and Insecure Workers in Struggle. This event began in Cologne (1999) was repeated in Paris (2000) and Brussels (2001), but more recently has taken place as part of the European Social Forums (ESF) in Florence (2002), Paris (2003) and London (2004). The breadth and depth of support of the ESFs is an indication of the signicance of the EM Network as a campaigning organization that was paving the way for the formation of a broader social movement out of the specic instances of resistance to neoliberalism. Its relative success in mobilizing transnationally was, in part, due to its loose structure as a grassroots network. This form of organization facilitated an in-depth dialogue between the grassroots activists and organizations that were at the forefront of mobilizing against the social consequences of neoliberalism within nation states, thereby enabling the translation of demands and forms of action across borders. Furthermore, the Network accommodated political differences so as to begin to form a broader social movement critical of the current direction of European integration and in favour of an alternative social Europe. This contrasts with organized labour, in the form of the ETUC, that was tied organizationally and ideologically to the institutions of the EU thereby forming part of the elite consensus which limited its capacity to mobilize effectively around an alternative to neoliberal Europe. This understanding of the EM Network was developed through Mathers adopting a dual role as both activist and researcher and this was noted by participants in the EM Network in that he was introduced to a meeting in Paris in September 1999 as an activist-researcher (militant-chercheur). Mathers rst made contact with the EM Network when he participated in the demonstration in Cardiff on the occasion of the EU summit meeting in May 1998. As well as attending demonstrations and meetings across Europe in the following 18 months, he also began to organize in his locality around the social questions raised by the EM Network. He helped to reactivate a claimants group (Bristol Benets Action Group), which mobilized around welfare reforms such as the New Deal, and this led on to the formation of a group (Bristol Against Casualisation Campaign), which mobilizes around issues of job insecurity. Mathers therefore developed his insights into the EM Network not only through observing and participating in events outside the UK, but also by attempting to comprehend how the European dimension impacted on, and could advance, the specic struggles in his locality. Mathers found that his eldwork interviews and participation in the European Assemblies actually reected the process of exchange across borders occurring between militants. This entailed sharing information about the specic content and consequences of neoliberal employment and welfare policies as well as the specic forms of resistance that restructuring was producing. During a workshop on welfare reforms he was asked to describe policies like the New Deal that had been identied by the European Commission as an example of best practice for other governments to emulate. His contribution sparked discussion with German activists especially, who invited him to visit and interview them at an unemployed centre in Oldenburg. Interviews alerted him to a key issue concerning activists: to what extent were militant forms of action prevalent in France and Italy actually translatable across borders? Like other militants, he found that detailed discussion about actions such as acquiring goods from supermarkets or travelling en masse on public transport without paying revealed that they were not amenable to simple emulation due to differing political cultures. Nevertheless, such discussions served to demystify the organization and deployment of direct action and led to an identication of common elements, such as the humorous and theatrical dimensions, that assisted translation across borders.

This was evident in Bristol, where the innovative decentralized European days of action against Workfare called by the EM Network were translated rst into a picket of a job centre and later into an occupation of the ofce of the local Labour Party. This occupation was in protest against the introduction of Employment Zones and involved the temporary transformation of the ofce into an Enjoyment Zone. Party workers and ofcials were encouraged to join activists in wearing party hats and playing party games as representations of agreement with the slogan of Less labour, More party. This event provided a concrete experience of how the European dimension was affecting mobilization in the locality. This was not only in terms of the encouragement of forms of direct action, but also in that meetings and publicity material included explicitly the role of the European Commission in advancing neoliberal policies. Activists and the wider public were also made aware of the existence of common European forms of mobilization in support of Europeanized demands such as an end to Workfare and for a guaranteed income and other social rights. It became evident to Mathers that such events facilitated through the EM Network were playing an important role in producing a growing awareness of international networking by the proponents of neoliberal policies and how this necessitated an internationalization of opposition by those who experienced their social consequences. As one Belgian activist put it in an interview:
[T]his is something that goes on worldwide.[That] the EU is one of the key actors in what goes on in our lives everyday and it inuences a great deal of what our future will be like if we let it. So I think we would feel more isolated as we feel much stronger when we have a lot of other people telling us that we are living the same shit and we are ghting the same shit. And we know we are right because everybody else in the other countries are doing the same and thinking the same. Also it can help to create the resistance by having new ideas of how to ght.
Such statements assisted Mathers in developing a view that the EM Network was a mechanism for communicating and thereby accelerating diverse practices of opposition to neoliberalism across sectors of resistance and across national borders. However, he also became aware, from both his activist and researcher perspective, that this was a willed process. Leading activists were articulating explicitly a strategy seeking to mobilize a movement from below that brought together at the European level activists engaged in organizations whose main concern were the issues of not only unemployment, job insecurity and social exclusion, but also racism, environmental destruction and war.8 Moreover, this was a self-consciously internationalist movement which was rooted in a diversity of specic instances of resistance within nation states, but also targeted the transnational centres of power. Mathers academic evaluation of the EM Network was communicated through books, articles and conference papers which were accompanied by more directly activist-oriented writing.9 These were by no means separate in that interviewees received copies of his work and, for example, activists from the EM Network participated in a session of an academic conference at which he was presenting his work. These liaisons were an expression of a developing and ongoing relationship between Mathers and EM Network participants on the dimensions of both researcher and activist. This led him to gain access to meetings and attendance on actions of which he was either unaware or hitherto uninvited. However, his presence at such events was not solely to collect data, but also to express his opposition to a neoliberal Europe as well as support for a Different Europe. On occasions such as at the EU summit in Nice, his solidarity was expressed by standing alongside his respondents

as they faced up to rows of riot police making liberal use of tear gas. By so doing he gained an appreciation of the unity amongst the diversity of participating organizations to add to his experience of the joyful character of the lived internationalism of events such as the Assemblies. He thereby enriched his experience of the EM Network as an activist as well as as a researcher and learnt about it so as to produce knowledge for directly activist as well as academic purposes. Reections on Researching Resistance to Neoliberalism In this section we reect upon our experiences of researching resistance to neoliberalism in terms of the four dimensions of the ECM including a discussion of its possible power effects: domination, silencing, objectication and normalization (Burawoy, 1998). Intervention Burawoy (1998, p. 14) asserts that researcher intervention is a virtue because it is through our effects upon a social phenomenon that we can come to know it. The effects of our interventions are not noise but music. Furthermore, he advises that the points of entry and exit can be particularly instructive moments of the research project. So it proved in our case studies, with a signicant contrast in terms of modes of intervention highlighting different forms of organization operating in differing socio-political contexts. Novelli was faced with a climate of mistrust of outsiders generated by the repressive nature of militarized neoliberalism in Colombia. Once his credibility was established, he was able to experience the strong bonds of solidarity that resistance in such an environment generated within organizations like Sintraemcali. Ending his project raised the question of maintaining these bonds, an issue he addressed by continuing his solidarity work. Mathers found little difculty in gaining access as activists were keen to engage him in discussion about the situation in the UK thereby suggesting to him the role of the EM Network in facilitating an exchange of information and experiences of restructuring and resistance across borders. He also found much less interest in his political views than in his campaigning work. This suggested to him that there existed a general strategic orientation amongst activists and organizations to achieve the common task of constructing a campaigning network to challenge neoliberalism at the European level, thereby overcoming at the international level a situation, so often evident at the national level, of organizations divided due to political differences. In terms of the power effect of domination, we were struck by the contrast between our approaches and the model of intervention espoused by Alaine Touraine.10 We eschewed this approach to intervention as a method of domination in which the sociologist takes the role of an intellectual prophet (Papadakis, 1989) that seeks to raise the consciousness of activists through analytical intervention from the outside. Our approach was to bridge the gap between academia and activism by means of a democratic dialogue in the Third Space (Routledge, 1996) of critical engagement. To this end we sought to develop relations of solidarity with participants that were not only expressed as an abstract opposition to neoliberalism, but also developed through a series of micro-practices such as contributing knowledge and skills, sharing personal and political experiences and putting body and soul on the line. Therefore our approach to achieving a rapprochement (Bourdieu, 2003) between researcher and activist was one which combined both ideological and practical expressions of solidarity. These bonds of solidarity varied in character according to the specic nature of each episode of resistance. In the context of militarized neoliberalism, the

bonds developed by Novelli were akin to those amongst comrades whereas the ties developed by Mathers, in the context of a looser networked organization, were similar to those established by a companheiro (companion) (Scheper-Hughes, 1995). This approach to intervention does not deny the elementary divergence in interests between academics and activists (Burawoy, 1998, p. 23), but addresses this matter through practical engagement in the Third Space which contributes to the movement while subverting and resisting the demands made by academic institutions. This approach also maintains the possibility for intellectuals to question the strategy and practices of the movements in which they are engaged. However, this is approached more in terms of seeking answers to questions arising from the movement than in supplying answers generated in the academy, thereby generating a process of mutual learning commended by Bourdieu. In this sense, our intervention was an open-ended process of co-investigation which was based on a dialogical model of knowledge creation and popular intellectualism that focused on critical problem solving not a banking model in which the researcher claims to have the answers (Johnston and Goodman, 2006, pp. 2426). Process Burawoy (1998, pp. 14 15) alerts us to how the ECM enables the researcher to discover the tacit knowledge that is embedded in social situations. Being movement participants enabled us to generate situated knowledge (Johnston and Goodman, 2006) thereby demonstrating the practical consciousness (Burawoy, 1998) of the activists that was developed and deployed in the movement events. This can be seen most strikingly in the innovative occupations that used activists knowledge and skills of how to enter and secure the occupied buildings. Occupations were also designed creatively with cultural events (football, parties) to counter the fear engendered by the presence of the police and the military and utilized new communication technologies to mobilize outside support. Such transfers of knowledge and skills through networks of trust and solidarity have been identied by the World Bank (1998) as social capital, thereby seeking to appropriate the vitality of grassroots networks for the private good of capital accumulation (Fine, 2001; Navarro, 2002). This is particularly pertinent to networks of resistance as social movements have been identied as rich sources of cultural innovation, new elites and institutional renewal (Melucci, 1989). However, our research projects suggest the potential for subverting (Mayer and Rankin, 2002) the established research agenda of social capital to identify in oppositional groups social processes that develop social capacity (Smith and Kulynch, 2002) as the basis of an alternative form of development. Burawoy (1998, p. 18) also encourages the extension of observations over time and place to reveal the operation of how regimes of power structure situations into processes by making use of resources (money, skill, education, prestige, etc) and schemas (norms, beliefs, theories, etc). Our case studies of resistance demonstrated a tendency to reject routine processes of political activity and the development of unconventional and empowering forms of politics. However, it is important not to overstate this tendency as this would silence those elements in Sintraemcali and in the EM Network that still operated according to established and more formalized political procedures based on the pre-existing organizational structures. Nevertheless, aspects of the resistance, such as the utility reconnections and the subsequent community mobilizations in Cali, deployed existing resources in new ways and also generated new resources which in turn produced new alliances and organizational links which contributed to the formation of a new regime of power within the union. The cross-border mobilization through the EM Network generated new norms of internationalism which challenged those prevailing in the existing transnational trade union structures.11 Our role as

activist-researchers also meant that our participation involved the application of our resources and schemas within the movements and that we became part of the new regimes of power that started to emerge. Structuration Burawoy (1998, p. 15, original emphases) draws attention to the eld which is external to the immediate research site and requires us to delineate the social forces that impress themselves upon the ethnographic locale. We simultaneously explored the processes of structuration created by neoliberalism both in our own universities and in the research sites. As Bourdieus work highlights, neoliberalism has recruited academics into producing knowledge for the ends of the powerful and with initiatives such as the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) this will probably be accompanied increasingly by academic production for prot. In this context, Santos call for knowledge as emancipation is a powerful antidote to neoliberalism. It also suggests, as do our case studies, that the outputs of an engaged ethnography cannot be merely for the alienated purposes of prot or (in the UK context) for the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE).12 Therefore, we heeded Scheper-Hughes (1995) call for ethnographers to be shock troops and alarmists who produce texts that cut through the layers of acceptance of injustice. As already mentioned, we produced materials in a variety of formats for both academic and non-academic audiences that extended the process of research dissemination beyond the academy, thereby following the example of Bourdieu in making the movement more visible in the public sphere. In our research sites, uncovering the structures through which the abstract processes of neoliberal restructuring were advanced led both of us into an exploration of new forms of domination and through this we were able to concretize how the practices of neoliberalism were affecting the strategies of activist movements. This also led on to the identication of the structures through which counter-hegemonic social forces were beginning to develop, thereby making apparent new forms of Santos sociology of emergences. In the research on Sintraemcali, Novelli highlighted two broad processes: transborderization and horizontalization as key elements of Sintraemcalis strategic development. Transborderization signied the new geography of the trade unions activity, which transcended local and national boundaries. Horizontalization signied the new alliances forged between local poor communities, campesinos, NGOs and international social actors that opposed privatization. These twin processes were then linked back to two key macro-structural changes that have resulted from neoliberal restructuring: the reorganization of capital on the global scale and the fragmentation of the working class. Following Burawoys (1998, p. 19) advice to make each case work in its connection to other cases, it is possible to identify similar processes operating through the EM Network which played an important role in the development of common European actions in support of a European agenda of common demands. These were the expression of a strategy for moving beyond the militant particularisms (Nilsen and Cox, 2005) of sectoral struggles within nation states in an attempt to develop a social movement from below (ibid.) which would counterpoise its emerging project for a Different Europe to the neoliberal project being advanced through the EU. This analysis of the EM Network is inuenced by the idea that the recomposition of political relations in Europe has produced a new institutional set-up in the shape of the EU which provides the structural environment for the development of new forms of agency (Bieler, 2005).13 However, as Burawoy (1998) notes, at this level of analysis the danger is of the objectication of structures as all encompassing and all powerful. Therefore, central to our writing

was not merely identifying the inuence of the macro-level structures on the forms and strategies of resistance, but also how they were actively contested and thereby reconstructed.14 This served to highlight the open-ended nature of social structures and challenged the argument that There Is No Alternative to neoliberalism in the contemporary era. Reconstruction Burawoy (1998) regards the researchers participation in the world as a tool to expand knowledge and states that reexive science builds on theory and utilizes the real world to test out the usefulness of such theory. It is important to note, however, that theory is always for someone and for some purpose (Cox, 1996, p. 87) and emerges out of a problematic thrown up by particular historical conjunctures. In the present conjuncture, a central problematic is the terrain upon which struggle is waged in an increasingly globalized world. Consequently, both of us took as our starting point theorists that have sought to theorize this problematic. Castells (1997), for example, has been a highly inuential proponent of the argument that globalization fatally undermines the capacity of the labour movement to advance a progressive social project. While accepting his central premise that economic globalization has increased capital mobility whilst fragmenting labour, our case studies began to challenge both the inevitability and the permanency of this process. In this sense, they follow Burawoys (1998, p. 24) advice that challenging the normalization of theory can be achieved by embedding the analysis in perspectives from below. This approach enabled us to go beyond sociological critiques of the discourse of globalization as a myth (Bourdieu, 1998). Our research identied real instances of Santos politics of translation by demonstrating how fragmented labour, grouped in different collectivities (social movements, unions, community groups), has united under common demands in the local and has linked up on a range of scales thereby forming transnational networks of solidarity that have mobilized to produce tangible material results. Crucially, our case studies allowed us to avoid the simplistic notion of labour necessarily going global because of capitals shift. Both studies highlighted that the nation state remained an important terrain for labour mobilization, but that a range of other scales, both sub-national and supranational, were also important terrains of struggle and contestation. This led Novelli to engage with research in human and political geography which highlighted the way globalization was de- and re-territorializing the terrain of struggle on which the capital/labour conict was played out (Herod, 2001). While different scales may well temporarily favour the interests of capital (Harvey, 1989), there was nothing inevitable about this. Labour as a social movement could change its practices and tacticsjust as capital hadand our case studies demonstrated the emergence of new strategies and tactics for effective mobilization on these terrains. Mathers research highlighted how the EM Networks circulation of best practices of resistance across borders mirrored the functioning of the Open Method of Coordination (De la Porte and Pochet, 2003) of national employment and social policies. In this sense, multi-level governance (Hooghe and Marks, 2001) in the EU has provoked a response of multi-level mobilization by certain labour organizations. However, although there is a degree of regionalization, the EU retains a largely inter-governmental character that privileges the national terrain of struggle. Therefore, while multi-level in form, the practices of the EM Network can be understood as a nationally-based internationalism. This describes how successful national struggles depend on others elsewhere also being in struggle: as inspirations, as experiments we need to critically study and learn from, and to create enough international turmoil to limit the isolation of any particular struggle (Gindin, 2003). This analysis was communicated in papers and articles that

were made available to activists and thereby met Burawoys (1998, p. 22) entreaty that in the reexive mode, social theory intervenes in the world it seeks to grasp. Conclusion In conclusion, we focus on two elements of engaged ethnography which give this article its title: solidarity and praxis. Firstly, ours is an ethically and politically committed approach to research that is embedded within concrete instances of organized resistance to neoliberalism. At the general level, our aim is to forge a relationship of mutual benet between social science and social movement based on solidarity and reciprocity. This is expressed concretely as a dialogical process of academic engagement with those left out of the benets of neoliberal globalization. This can serve to enrich the strategic repertoire of social movements through intellectual exchange and debate, strengthen progressive social theory by grounding it more rmly in the everyday realities of resistance practices and, perhaps most importantly, construct bridges of solidarity between social movements and the academy, as part of a politics of translation (Santos, 1999) that can open up new possibilities and directions for social struggle as well as for social research. Engaged ethnography challenges the conventional roles of relationships established by academics and generates new ones. The ethnographer does not stand outside the object of enquiry thereby adopting the role of spectator, but stands alongside those engaged in struggle thereby taking the role of witness and even active participant. In this sense, the ethnographer may nd many paths to ethical and political commitment, but each of them involves him/her in undertaking a variety of acts of solidarity (Scheper-Hughes, 1995). As a public intellectual this may take the form of utilizing the privileged location of the academy to assist in making visible the invisibility of marginalized social movements and by doing so strengthen their legitimacy in the public sphere. More straightforwardly, it may mean placing the practical and personal skills of the academic at the service of the social movement. As a critical intellectual, the academic may express solidarity by nurturing a dynamic exchange of ideas with the social movement and by facilitating a link between different cases of resistance, enabling the possibility of translation and the cross-fertilization of movement strategies. While we believe that the ethical/solidarity dimension is an important part of our approach, we also recognize that this alone is insufcient and that engaged ethnography, if it is to be taken seriously, also needs to demonstrate its ability to provide powerful insights into processes of resistance to neoliberalism. Our aim is to demonstrate how solidaristic forms of critical engagement can generate and make visible new insights and new knowledges left hidden by more conventional ethnographic methods. Engaged ethnography, through processes of solidarity and trust building, enabled privileged access to the experiences and perspectives of key actors and to the sites of resistance in which they were embedded. This facilitated the construction of a rich and complex picture of the local micro-processes of resistance and how the fabric of this resistance was woven. This provided the foundation for extending outwards to the dimensions of process, structuration and reconstruction. Reinserting our ethnographic observations within a framework of political economy then facilitated our ability to begin to develop meso-level conceptual tools such as horizontalization and transborderization which served as heuristic devices through which to explore the way labour movements are constructing strategies that address the structural transformations brought about by neoliberal globalization. In both of our studies we were able to document and observe how two very different movements were addressing these fundamental aspects of neoliberal globalization in very different ways so as to develop new forms of political activity

(e.g. trade union/community alliances) and new forms of geographical practice (e.g. multi-scalar mobilizations). In doing so we were able to challenge the notion that capitals new-found mobility inevitably left labour weakened and powerless to resist and thereby challenged a teleological understanding of processes of neoliberal globalization. Our case studies highlighted how labour too is operating and organizing on a range of geographical scales and is developing strategic alliances with different social forces to strengthen its claims. Perhaps most importantly, we were able to demystify these strategic and organizational developments through detailed cases highlighting how these movements constructed and developed their strategic action. While we do not want to suggest that engaged ethnography represents a template for research on radical social movements we do feel that it goes some way towards addressing the alienation felt by ourselves and other critical academics by facilitating the development of bonds of solidarity and reciprocity between academia and social movements. Simultaneously, and equally important, it also provides a rigorous and systematic approach to research that by grounding itself in everyday struggles can reveal important insights into resistance processes and develop new concepts and understandings that can inform better and more effective movement strategies. Crucially, engaged ethnography provides one possible route for critical academics not only to interpret the world but also to try and change it: engaged ethnography as praxis. Notes
1 The debate over the role of theory goes right back to the founding fathers of sociology. Webers theory of action is a theory of society which tends to naturalize the social relations which it seeks to explain (Clarke, 1991). Weberian sociology therefore imposes society upon us as an ideal type, empirical instances of which it seeks to describe and classify. It also generates dichotomies between facts and values and between intellectual and political activity, thereby relegating the intellectual to an advisory role in solving social problems. Marx, in contrast, developed a theory against society (Holloway, 1995, p. 156) which engaged in a logical and historical process of critique of the categories of political economy. This approach resulted in the inseparability of critical theory and critical revolutionary action (Korsch, 1970) that entailed a direct engagement of the intellectual in the process of social and political change (Gramsci, 1972). For a Marxist critique of Webers value-free sociology see Lewis (1975). For a discussion of what is ethnography see Hammersley and Atkinson (1995). Harvey (1990: p. 11) argues that conventional ethnography is an inductive method that uses participant observation to gather detailed information on human behaviour and meanings, which is data that can be used to produce new generalizations about the social world. This is contrasted with critical ethnography, which attempts to link the detailed analysis of ethnography to wider social structures and systems of power relationships in order to get beneath the surface of oppressive structural relationships. See Novelli (2004, 2006) for more in-depth analysis. A Colombian government ministry that is responsible for the regulation and control of public services in Colombia. An edited version of these accounts was later published by Public Services International (Novelli, 2002) in English and Spanish. Sanssans travail (without work), sans logement (without homes), sans papiers (without documents). Information from interviews with prominent activists in the EM Network. For more information about the EM Network and for writing for academic and activist audiences arising from the research project see Mathers (1999, 2001, 2005). Touraine et al. (1983) formed intervention groups of anti-nuclear activists and researchers with the aim of the conversion of supporters of anti-state protests to Touraines perspective of an anti-technocratic social movement. Most militants rejected his analysis while some staged an elaborate hoax and others withdrew amidst charges of manipulation. The researchers were left isolated and dejected, but still rejected outright the activists proposal to use the intervention groups to discuss movement strategy. For interesting explorations of the contrast between old and new internationalism see De Angelis (2000) and Lambert and Webster (2005). See Harvie (2000) for a critique of the RAE as a mechanism for marketizing research.
2 3
4 5 6 7 8 9 10
11 12

13 Bieler (2005) argues that the EU is institutionally arranged so as to protect the neoliberal state form from popular inuence in the areas of economic and monetary policy. The European Marches are an attempt to reassert popular inuence on policy. See Taylor and Mathers (2002) on the relationship between social movement mobilization and the construction of the EU.
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References
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Andrew Mathers is a Senior Lecturer at the University of the West of England, UK. His research focuses mainly on labour and social movements and their responses to processes such as European integration and neoliberal globalization. He is currently researching into recent developments in the formation of community unionism in the USA and the UK as well as the crisis of social democratic forms of trade unionism in Western Europe. He has written on the EM Network and the wider social movement of which it was a part in Mathers, A. (2007) Struggling for a Social Europe: Neoliberal Globalisation, the EU and the Birth of a European Social Movement (Aldershot: Ashgate). Mario Novelli is a Lecturer in International Development at the University of Amsterdam. His work explores the relationship between globalization, education and development and he has published on issues of the global governance of education, critical ethnography, knowledge production in trade union movements and popular resistance to processes of privatization in Colombia. He is currently carrying out research on the causes and responses to violence against the education community in Colombia and co-writing a book on Globalisation, Labour and Knowledge for a Routledge Series on Rethinking Globalization.

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Globalizations June 2007, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp.

Researching Resistance to Neoliberal Globalization: Engaged Ethnography as Solidarity and Praxis

ANDREW MATHERS & MARIO NOVELLI

University of the West of England, UK,

University of Amsterdam, Netherlands

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Figure 1. Typology of sociology. Adapted from Burawoy (2004, p. 1607)

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