Coordinator:
Osvaldo León

Co-authors:
Osvaldo León,
Sally Burch,
Eduardo Tamayo

Assistant:
Raúl Borja

Quito, september 2001.

Agencia Latinoamericana de Información

This project was carried out thanks to a financial contribution from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Ottawa, Canada..

Latin America is undergoing a new phase of social reactivation whose agenda includes global issues and social actors who seek to break out of the isolation of their specific struggles. Under this tonic, networks and coordinating bodies have proliferated (among peasants, indigenous people, women, African descendents, popular urban communities, among others), that are appropriating the Internet to intercommunicate, coordinate and disseminate their actions and proposals. This involves endeavours to deepen their understanding of the logic behind it, so as to reap fuller benefits.

The first part of this book explores the debate regarding the Internet, seeking to locate more precisely what is at stake in this environment, as a prerequisite to thinking of strategies. The second part presents a survey of how the organizations involved in the Web Community of Social Movements are incorporating the Internet into their practice, looking at utilization and benefits, motivations and perceptions, social-organizational and communicational implications.

Printed Version   PDF Version   Spanish Version

Social Movements on the Net

Contents

Introduction

PART I
New Information and Communications Technologies:
Light and Shadows

Chapter 1: An Aproach to the Debate on the Social Implications of ICTs

ICTs and Globalization
Internet: the New "Object-King"
Promises and Realities
The Development Gap

Chapter 2: The Networked Society

New Modes of Organization
Social Networks
Cyber-Communities
Global Alliances On-line

PART II
Latin @merica: movimientos.org

Chapter 3: Exclusion and Resistance in Latin America

The Neoliberal Wave
Rebuilding Social Organization
Unity in Diversity
The Challenge of Communication

Chapter 4: Internet and Social Organizations: An Exploratory Study

Part I

Information Capital: a Methodological Opening
An Adverse Environment
Uses and Usefulness
Technological Appropriation

Part II

Chapter 5: A Process, in Progress

Social Appropriation of the Net
Learning to Learn
Building Alternatives

Bibliography

Acronyms used in this book