I skärningspunkten mellan det globala och det lokala : Tolkningsprocesser och koalitionsbyggande i organiseringen av lokala sociala forum

Sammanfattning: World Social Forum, and the worldwide appearance of regional, national and local Social Forums (SF), is an important part of the movement for global justice. The aim of this thesis is to explore how the SF as a global phenomenon is interpreted and staged locally in Sweden. Central questions are: What local meanings are given to the SF phenomenon when it is introduced and organized in a local context? What relations are created between the various actors in this organizational process in terms of coalitions and power relations? How do the SFs relate to the Swedish institutionalized popular adult education? These questions are explored in the four articles on which this thesis rests. Ethnographic field studies of local organizational processes constitute the empirical basis of theoretically informed hermeneutic interpretations. A neo-gramscian perspective is used to analyze the SF as a potentially counter-hegemonic popular education phenomenon. This perspective has been complemented by mainly two theoretical concepts, that is, framing and symbolic capital. Results demonstrate how the emergence of SFs in Sweden is characterized by a widespread desire among various activists and organizations to build coalitions. In the establishment of SFs the institutionalized popular adult education play both the role of a source of economic and material resources and of being a link between various organizations. However, in the wide and formally open organizational process, specific distinctions and hierarchies arise that might neutralize the SF’s ideological impact and its potential for counter-hegemonic coalition construction. Finally, a Swedish academic debate on the concept of “folkbildning” (popular adult education) is addressed. It is argued that there is a need to widen the scope of this debate to more frequently focus on global (popular) educational phenomena (such as the social forums) in research on “folkbildning”, and not only pay attention to “typical” national or Nordic institutions and traditions.