IRSH 52 (2007), pp. 21–34 DOI: 10.1017/S0020859007003100 # 2007 Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis
The Funny Side of Globalization: Humour and Humanity in Zapatista Framing Thomas Olesen
Summary: This article argues that the literature on social movements and globalization has not paid sufficient attention to the way in which political actors who act globally try to overcome the social, cultural, and political distances that separate them. It introduces the concept of global framing to give focus to the discursive processes central to such ‘‘distance bridging’’. In particular, it emphasizes how symbols and emotions are crucial in the framing of distance. Empirically, it discusses how the considerable global resonance created by the Zapatistas in Mexico is facilitated by a framing strategy, carried out mainly by the movement’s spokesman, Subcomandante Marcos, in which humour, imperfection, and symbols play a decisive role.
INTRODUCTION
By the mid-1990s globalization was a well-established topic in sociology, but not so in the field of political activism. The first systematic signs of life date only from the second half of the 1990s and it took an event, the ‘‘Battle in Seattle’’ in 1999, to really spark the growth of a new agenda.1 Today, the field is well out of its infancy, and empirical developments and a steady pace of theoretical refinement have provided newcomers with considerable work to become acquainted with.2 All of these works deal implicitly or explicitly with the issue of distance. How, in other words, do individuals and collectives living in different geographical locales and under different social, cultural, and political conditions succeed in 1. For some early works, see Jackie Smith et al. (eds), Transnational Social Movements and Global Politics: Solidarity beyond the State (Syracuse, NY, 1997); Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists beyond Borders (Ithaca, NY, 1998); Donatella della Porta et al. (eds), Social Movements in a Globalizing World (New York, 1999). 2. See for example Sanjeev Khagram, James V. Riker, and Kathryn Sikkink (eds), Restructuring World Politics: Transnational Social Movements, Networks, and Norms (Minneapolis, MN, 2002); Donatella della Porta and Sidney Tarrow (eds), Transnational Protest and Global Activism (Lanham, MD, 2005); Joe Bandy and Jackie Smith (eds), Coalitions across Borders: Transnational Protest and the Neoliberal Order (Lanham, MD, 2005).
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859007003100 Published online by Cambridge University Press