nigd network institute for global democratization
North American Chapter
The Next Frontier for Global Activism
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Coordinating Team
Jackie Smith
- Associate professor of Sociology and Peace studies,
the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame
Chris Hausmann
- Ph.D. student, Sociology Deparment, University of Notre Dame
Ana Velitchkova
- Ph.D. student, Sociology department, University of Notre Dame
Network participants
Lucia Alvarez
- Centro de Investigaciones Interdisciplinarias en Ciencias y Humanidades, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)
Gianpaolo Baiocchi
- Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Marc Becker
-
Professor of Latin American history at Truman State University
Dorval Brunelle
-
Professor of sociology, University of Quebec at Montreal, Canada
Scott Byrd
-
Doctoral student in Sociology, University of California Irvine
Donatella della Porta
-
Professor of Sociology, European University Institute, Florence
Pascale Dufour
-
Professeure adjointe, Département de science politique, Université de Montréal
Lyndi Hewitt
-
Department of Sociology, Vanderbilt University
Rosalba Icaza
-
Marie Curie Post-doctoral Fellow, Göteborgs Universitet, Iberoamerikanska Institutet
Jeffrey Juris
-
Assistant professor of anthropology, Arizona State University
Marina Karides
-
Assistant professor of sociology, Florida Atlantic University
Alex Khasnabish
- Assistant professor of sociology and social anthropology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia
Lorenzo Mosca
-
European University Institute - SPS Department, Florence Italy
Ellen Reese
- Associate professor of s ociology, University of California Riverside
Jay Smith
- Professor of political science, Athabasca University, Alberta Canada
Elizabeth Smythe
-
Professor of political science, Concordia University, Alberta
Lesley J. Wood
- Assistant professor, York University, Toronto Ontario
The aim of NIGD is to contribute to worldwide democratisation. To promote global democratisation, NIGD works to strengthen global civil society by producing and developing emanicipatory knowledge for democratic movements, organisations, and states. All of NIGD’s work is based on the conviction that globalisation, defined as the coming-together-of-humanity, must be based on cross-cultural dialogue concerning both philosophical fundamentals, and concrete reform proposals.
The North American chapter of NIGD is an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars doing original research on how local and regional groups of activists in North America are responding and relating to the World Social Forum process. We are interested in the implications of this emerging global process for democracy at local, national, and global levels. The World Social Forums are among the most important political developments of recent years, and systematic attempts to understand its operations and evolution can strengthen theory and practice related to global social change. A key question guiding our research is whether and how the World Social Forum process contributes to the cultivation of skills, knowledge, and normative commitments relevant to the practice of democracy at local, national, and global levels. By expanding the network of scholars working on these themes, we hope to encourage more comparative analyses of diverse local and national contexts in North America, Europe, and elsewhere. The network is designed as a parallel to a similar group of researchers based in Europe and known as the DEMOS project (see http://demos.iue.it/)
The key aims of the North American chapter include:
- Providing links to publications and working papers on the WSF process;
- Facilitating dialogues among scholars and encouraging collaborative and comparative work;
- Coordinating research efforts within and across social forums;
- Encouraging and facilitating student and scholar efforts to support the World Social Forum process;
- Facilitating the dissemination of knowledge about the World Social Forum process to diverse academic and public audiences.
Projects
Publications
Global Democracy and the World Social Forums (Paradigm Publishers, Summer 2008) *NOTE: All book royalties support the work of Grassroots Global Justice and the US Social Forums.
collaborative research
Research Group on the U.S. Social Forum (Summer 2008): Collaborative observation of USSF Events [see the USSF Observation protocol we have developed]; USSF Atlanta Research Group Blog
Documentary film project and study of how groups participate in USSF
scholar activism
Collaboration with groups such as Sociologists without Borders and International Network of Scholar Activists to facilitate international cooperation and dialogue among scholar-activists
Network Institute for Global Democratization
U.S. Social Forum Writers Group: Information about USSF Writers' Network
U.S. Social Forum Peace Caucus
Scholar-Activist Workshop at USSF
Media contributions
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NIGD North America is associated with the
Center for the Study of Social Movements and Social Change (CSSM)
University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana USA
For more information or to be involved in this network, please contact Jackie Smith
Website questions and problems to wsfgroup@nd.edu
links
London Regional Social Forum (Ontario)
Related Research Groups
INOSA
Oberservatoire des Ameriques
Demos Project
UCR Research Working Group on Transnational Social Movements
Events
Report from the first USSF
November 2006 Workshop Documents
*This workshop was made possible by support from: The Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts in the College of Arts and Letters, The Center for the Study of Social Movements and Social Change, The Office of Research, and the Department of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame.