‘With the nation state, and hence democracy as we have known it, in

deep and multiple crises, the renewal of democracy on the foundation

of equality depends on being attentive to the emergence of democratic
and egalitarian self-government independent of—and sometimes up
against—the nation state. Joe Parker's attentive study of indigenous
practices, popular democracies, and a variety of forms of everyday
democracy provides us with an invaluable resource for envisaging—
and implementing—egalitarian strategies for democratic practice
beyond the nation state. Essential reading for anyone working to create
new politics from the left!’
Hilary Wainwright, author of Reclaim the State, Experiments in Popular
Democracy, co-editor of Red Pepper, fellow of the Transnational Institute

‘This important book shows how “practicing equality” is essential to

any substantive account of democracy. Through a series of examples of
global and local solidarity, participation, and assembly, Joe Parker
demonstrates how equality can, and does, achieve concrete meaning in
the practices of community. Defying the debates that assume that
principles and practices are distinct, Parker insists that equality is
found in a number of practices that materialize and transform
principles. Shifting our attention away from abstraction and toward
popular and enacted forms of democracy, this crucial book considers
how groups constitute and distribute power in an effort to produce
democratic forms of life with equality at its center. With cogent
analyses of groups such the Zapatista Movement, those engaged in
indigenous activism, resistance movements in Burma and India, the
International Women's Assembly, and Global Slum Dwellers, Parker
gives us a vital history that furthers the ethical domain of democratic
co-habitation that crosses the division between local and global. An
inspired and inspiring read and an opening toward the future of
democracy.’
Judith Butler, UC Berkeley

‘Democracy Beyond the Nation State is a collection of synoptic surveys

of contemporary communities of participatory democracy in which the
participants treat each other as equals from around the world and the
author’s careful reflections on them. It makes a very important
contribution to the growing field of local/global self-organising and self-
governing associations of egalitarian democratic practice beyond the
dominant representative model of democracy.’
James Tully, contributor to On Global Citizenship (Bloomsbury 2014)
and Freedom and Democracy in an Imperial Context (Routledge 2014)
Democracy Beyond the Nation State

Democracy promises rule by all, not by the few. Yet, electoral democracies
limit decision-making to representatives and have always had a weakness
for inequality. How might democracy serve all rather than the few?
Democracy Beyond the Nation State examines communities that practice
equality without elites or centralized structures through assemblies and
consensus. Rather than claiming equality by abstract rights or citizenship,
these groups put equality into practice by reducing wealth and health
divides or landlessness or homelessness and by equalizing workloads.
These practices are found in rural India and Brazil, in Buenos Aires,
London, and New York, and among the Iroquois, the Zapatistas, and the
global networks of La Via Campesina farmers and the World Social Forum.
Readable accounts of these horizontal democracies document multiple
political frames that prevent democracy from being frozen into entrenched
electoral systems producing modern inequalities. Using practice to rewrite
political theory, Parker draws on collective politics in Spivak and Derrida
and embodied relations from Povinelli and Foucault to show that equal
relations are not a utopian dream, not nostalgia, and not impossible.
This book provides many practical solutions to inequality. It will be
useful to students and scholars of political theory and social movements and
to those who are willing to work together for equality.

Joe Parker is Professor of International and Intercultural Studies at Pitzer

College and blogs at democracies2come.blogspot.com.
Routledge Innovations in Political Theory
59 Time, Memory, and the Politics of Contingency
Smita A. Rahman

60 Michael A. Weinstein
Action, Contemplation, Vitalism
Edited by Robert L. Oprisko and Diane Rubenstein

61 Deep Cosmopolis
Rethinking World Politics and Globalisation
Edited by Adam K. Webb

62 Political Philosophy, Empathy and Political Justice

Matt Edge

63 The Politics of Economic Life

Martin Beckstein

64 The Temporality of Political Obligation

Justin C. Mueller

65 Epistemic Liberalism
A Defence
Adam James Tebble

66 Hegel, Marx, and 21st Century Social Movements

Democracy, Dialectics, and Difference
Brian Lovato

67 Ideologies of Experience
Trauma, Failure, and the Abandonment of the Self
Matthew H. Bowker
68 Post-Politics in Context
Ali Rıza Taşkale

69 Claus Offe and the Critical Theory of the Capitalist State Jens
Borchert and Stephan Lessenich

70 Equality Renewed
Christine Sypnowich

71 Rethinking Utopia: Place, Power, Affect

David M. Bell

72 Hugo Grotius and the Modern Theology of Freedom

Jeremy Seth Geddert

73 Critical Urban Theory, Common Property, and “the Political”

Desire and Drive in the City
Dan Webb

74 Democracy Beyond the Nation State

Practicing Equality
Joe Parker
Democracy Beyond the
Nation State
Practicing Equality

Joe Parker
First published 2017
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2017 Taylor & Francis
The right of Joe Parker to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance
with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by
any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are
used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-138-23584-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-40033-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear
For the Subaltern, from Whom We Have Much to Learn, and
for Tom Parker
Contents

Preface
Abbreviations

PART I
Rethinking Democratic Practice

Introduction: Democracy and Equality

1 Democracy Otherwise: Rethinking Democratic Practice

PART II
Specific Sites for Practicing Equality

2 Heritage Democracies: Indigenous Equality in Practice

3 Democracies from Below: Subaltern Equality in Practice

4 Popular Democracies: Popular Equality in Practice

5 Global Democracies: Global Equality in Practice

PART III
Concrete Outcomes of Equality in Practice
6 Everyday Democracies: Daily Equality in Practice

Conclusion: Equality in Practice

Appendix 1: Countermeasures against Inequality

Appendix 2: Resources for Equality in Practice
Index
Preface

Here you will find two parallel arguments, one in the text and one in the
references. But, as is often the case, while starting with two, you will find
that there are many more: multiple ways to practice equality beyond the
modern nation state, numbering some twenty or so by some calculations, or
more if you read between the lines. Each demonstrates that democracy is
not all it claims to be, or that equality is more or less than it says it is, or
that there are practices that exceed what we mean by democracy or equality,
whoever we are.
From there, it is a steady grind uphill to where democracy may tell us
something about equality. These days, most democracy tells us not about
equality but about how we must accept inequality: how we must vote for
those who can only talk inequality, must live in places where inequality
seems normal and natural, must complain about inequality but not practice
equality. Each chapter works to dislodge once more what is set in cement:
that democracy depends on elections and on states or governments, and that
all else is impossible or unreasonable or ineffective or unreal. You will see
soon enough whether that cement holds.
By multiplying singular sites practicing equality in ways beyond that
practiced by the electoral state, I demonstrate the astonishing range of Other
ways to practice equality. You will hear arguments from very well-
established authorities on how ineffective the modern conception of
democracy as growing out of the ballot box is at producing equality. As we
carefully examine the range of different modes of constituting the real of
social relations within different histories, the European tale of democracy
may begin to seem historically situated, without fixed rules and norms, and
even arbitrary, rather than the enforceable fixity and closure it might
otherwise appear to be. These multiple sites for equalizing practices not
only are possible, but already exist. On that point, I imagine, many will
agree.
Even though this is a work of nonfiction, reading what is to come
requires acts of the imagination. It invites you, the reader, to find equality
where you have been told it will never exist, or has always already existed
yet always seems somehow postponed indefinitely into the distant future, or
some such nonsense. The very real claims in each chapter are based in solid
social science research and investigative, on-the-ground reporting,
participant observation, and other seemingly reliable methods that make up
the vast majority of what is to come, perhaps some 99 percent or so of the
text. This empirical evidence gives an overview of democracy beyond the
state, democracy with a differance, democracy and equality together, even
though political scientists and many theorists will tell you that they don’t
really exist together.
So, this project relies on empirical research. All of the specific sites for
equality in practice are very well known in activist circuits and academic
disciplines of various stripes. All the sites are subject to intense debate; I do
not presume to summarize all the debates. Each site is sketched only
incompletely; mastery is not the goal. Specialists will certainly disagree
with some aspects of my analysis, drawing on their lived experience,
scientific observation, and on-the-ground testimony to how I have equality
all wrong: anthropologists, activists, community members, elders,
Indigenous community members, journalists, elected leaders, participants,
philosophers, politicians, the poor, queers, social scientists, women.
Since the modern European-derived colonizing state and scientific real
are at stake, and many of them are deeply invested in the modern, this is to
be expected. Only by dislodging their monopoly claims to the universal
truth of certain categories (democracy, equality, organizing strategy, truth)
as some sort of disciplinary and/or sectarian private property will their
notions of the real be recognizable as defined by political interests and
those limits be seen as reinforcing inequality.
I certainly do not introduce new information, new facts, new data, new
report-age, new developments, new movements, new strategies, new
models, or new evidence. So, I do not promise any new factual discoveries
to add to the violent history of discovery that often stands in for structural
change. Instead, differance comes into visibility all too briefly, only to be
all too quickly subdued by the logics and the limits of modern empirical
projects. That is the risk of the modern real. At least, as calculated for the
99 percent.
As always, the 1 percent must be watched carefully, for they may give
the lie to the rest of what is said: to all the numbers and calculations and
reportage and solid scientific evidence marshalled to convince you to stay
quiet and vote, don’t dare do more than vote, unless you work for a political
party or write a letter to your editor (if they still have newspaper editors) or
your senator or some other elected official. Parts of the text, like this
Preface and small bits and pieces here and there, ask you to read a bit
differantly, to allow for Other possible ways and sites and logics for
practicing equality as democracy beyond the state. Reading differantly may
open up passage to the democratic practices of the Others of the state and of
the modern. Reading differantly may also make possible an ethics or
politics practiced through responsibility to those who are so consistently
excluded from the calculations and resources and logics of democracy as
we know it.
In the text, this 1 percent exceeds the limits of the empirical. Unlike most
recent studies of the sites encountered in the chapters to come, I do not
claim to have directly observed the communities and movements in an
effort to render them believable and verifiable as truth claims. My own
practice does not begin or end with science. Instead, if reading differantly is
possible here, equality will shift from something almost always already
nearly achieved to a question with many answers, a point of vigilance, a site
of demand and negotiation, a place to bear witness, and a place for practice.
Engaging with the Others of the modern state may make possible some
form of ethics or politics through responsibility to those who are so
consistently blocked from democratic practices and resources and logics as
they have come to be normalized.
In constituting the specific sites for democratic practice, readers
interested in political theory will find in the main text of this book that I am
working back and forth between the work of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak,
Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Elizabeth Povinelli, and others. The
specific sources for this theoretical work are found in the endnotes, since
the body of the book sticks close to the singular histories, particularly in
Part II. These histories demonstrate the widespread nature of equality in
practice overlooked by many specialists, activists, elected leaders, and
humanitarians. Theoretical arguments of this sort will surface at times using
colloquial terms, as you have seen already, which may be read in two ways,
or more ways, depending on how you calculate meaning.
In working both along and against the grain of social science methods for
reliable knowledge, my hope is to produce a certain undecidable character
to the argument. This is not some sort of confused lack of clarity or
consistency. Rather, my aim is to disrupt the limits of what can be seen
using European-derived notions of the political or modern empiricism, to
revisit what counts as knowledge and what is consistently refused by
modern activists and social science as acceptable, “real” practice. By
multiplying sites of equality in practice that differ from modern state
democracies, my hope is to prevent over-identification with any single site,
any master narrative, any single method, any particular politics, any specific
mode of appropriation. Proliferating differences decenters democracy,
despite the entrenched, cemented place of the modern state.
Area specialists will find the specific sites insufficiently documented, no
doubt, without noting the argument about singularity. Theorists may find
the project overly data-driven, I imagine, without noting the argument for
allowing practice to set norms for theory. Activists will not be satisfied with
all the theory, I would guess, without recognizing the freedoms of practice.
Practitioners will find the lack of a clear program for action troubling. The
rest will have to make do with the violence of the limits forced on them by
language, by intellectual heritage, by bodily encoding, and by political
histories. Yet, these ambivalently identified readers may still wish to
unearth ways to carry out strategic, context-specific interventions that
interrupt, destabilize, and renegotiate that violence and those limits. That
contingent, limited, yet de-limiting work may be democracy in practice
after all.
I write these chapters from within a particular history, yet I have worked
to refuse the many divisions and ways in which that specific history might
determine the politics of the project. As I am a white settler occupying
Indigenous lands, my colonizer/colonized or white/nonwhite Other might
seem to be someone like Gandhi. Yet, while Gandhi opposed British
colonizers, he was also complicit with them in the Gandhi–Irwin pact of
1931. As a person of European descent, I might seem complicit with
another European, Jacques Derrida, in the west/east or Europe/non-Europe
binaries. Yet, Derrida’s childhood as a Jew in Algeria displaces any simple
identification with the west. As I am a straight man, man/woman binaries
might produce another Other, perhaps the lesbian feminist Judith Butler.
Yet, even those lesbians who refuse normative identities sometimes neglect
to displace the referent that binds them. As I am a middle-class person in
the national homeland of global capitalism, the gap between the rich and the
poor might compel readers to produce an unemployed factory worker as an
Other for this text. Yet, that factory worker might well support the capitalist
dream of equal opportunity by subjecting herself to exploitation in a factory
job. Identity politics fixes its adherents to social roles, while this project
works to shows how those roles are still subject to Other possible ethics and
politics. At this point, I can only hope that the dear reader will open their
reading to the many Others that haunt each line to come, demanding
accountability from democracy as conjured in each chapter, making the
(fore)closure of some clean identity and/or decolonial politics impossible.
Only time will tell whether I have been successful, perhaps.
I kept coming across places where equality was being practiced in modes
that did not rely on the electoral state, in Los Angeles and London, in
Toronto and Tunis and Thailand, in southern Mexico and southern China, in
Bengal and Brazil and Bangladesh, in reading and research travel and
following networks. Many have written about the Zapatistas and the
Brazilian Landless Workers’ Movement and the World Social Forum. But I
had no idea how many others there were. Perhaps the most difficult part of
this project has been sorting through all the writing and scholarship to find
specific studies that different types of readers might find reliable from
across the many, many different sectors of interest in practicing equality.
Hopefully, the brief sketches in Part II will give readers a sense of the
unmanageable multiplicity that awaits those who will dig deeper and more
broadly than I was able to. But this project only scratches the surface of a
very large body of practice.
The only sure thing I can confirm after doing the research presented here
is that there are many, many, many places where equality is practiced
beyond the modern state. Many of them are not accessible through the lens
I have used, of English-and Spanish-language print and web-published
academic writing, journalistic reportage, and activist testimonies. The vast
majority of people practicing equality of the sort seen here are not writing
about their work for public consumption. They are living their equalizing
practices under constant violence and enormous pressure in a world so
hostile to equality that it would wipe them and their practices off the face of
the earth if it could. That is their struggle. And ours, if we wish to embody
equality in practice, whoever we are.

***

Equality in practice first came to my attention through the Zapatista

movement. Many thanks to Cindy Forster and the members of the Chiapas
Support Committee at Scripps College, and to Efraín at CELMRAZ in
Oventic and the CELMRAZ teachers and participants, for getting me
started. Over the years, I learned a great deal from members of the ARMA
collective in Los Angeles; members of the Mexico Solidarity Network in
Chicago; Richard Stahler-Sholk; members of the Eastside Café community
in El Sereno; the members of the autonomous Caracol IV, Morelia, and
residents in Communidad Moisés y Gandhi during Escuelita Nivel 1,
August, 2013, particularly the votán Ivan; participants in the summer, 2015
Escuelita Nivel 2 dinner series in Los Angeles; Hilary Klein; and
participants in the summer, 2015 Los Angeles discussion group for Hilary
Klein’s book, Compañeras: Zapatista Women’s Stories (Oakland, CA:
Seven Stories Press, 2015).
Many contributed to the work and have been generous with their time,
analysis, and experience, including Cindy Forster, Roberto Leni, Vilma
Villela, Herman Rapaport, Ouyporn Khuankaew, Rebekah Sinclair, Janet
Conway, Arnie Saiki, Evan Murphy, Lauren Bitter, and Lalruatkima. I am
also grateful to those who suggested other readings and resources to pursue:
Rebekah Sinclair, Theo Karyotis, Jennifer Trejo, and Fazia Aitel. This
project would never have been completed without the able work of these
research assistants: Delia Tyrell, Sara Blanchfield, Kela Caldwell, Tiana
Michaels, Alex Espinosa, Maya Suzuki-Jones, Claire Gross, Casey Chong,
Natalie Mark, Jen Lesorogol, and Carter Stripp.
Others who have contributed, beyond those mentioned in the book, are an
anonymous reader for differences, Tom Hansen, Sirena Pellarolo, Andrea
Smith, Leanne Simpson, Mauricio Magaña, René Carrasco, Rafael
Vizcaíno, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Chris Rodriguez, Gladys Tzul Tzul,
Irma Alicia Velasquez Nimatuj, Claudia Arteaga, Aureliano from COPINH,
Tia Oros Peters, Katie Schubert, Will Barndt, Lako Tongun, Sarah
Sarzynsky, Sarah Sanbar, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) chapter
members at Occidental College, and two anonymous reviewers for
Routledge. I take full responsibility for any errors in the text that remain.
I am grateful for comments and criticisms of portions of the manuscript
when given as public presentations at the Eastside Café Echospace, El
Sereno; Indigenous Peoples’ History and Resistance series, Interfaith
Communities United for Justice and Peace, Los Angeles; Mapping
Knowledges for Social Change, World Social Forum, Tunis; Trans-Pacific
FTA: “NAFTA of the Pacific”? USC University Club, Los Angeles;
Legacies of Colonialism and Philosophies of Resistance Conference,
Villanova University; Critical Ethnic Studies Association National Meeting,
Toronto; Decolonizing Imaginations Conference, Villanova University;
International Studies Association—West Regional Meeting, Pasadena;
Cultural Studies Association National Meeting, San Diego; and the
National Women’s Studies Association National Meeting, Denver.
Organizations that have made this work possible include the Chiapas
Support Committee, Scripps College; CIDECI, San Cristóbal de Las Casas;
Pitzer College; the journal Latin American Perspectives, who granted
permission to use material from an article they published by Sara Motta,
“We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: The Feminization of
Venezuelan Resistance.” Latin American Perspectives, Issue 191, Vol. 40
No. 4 (July 2013): 35–54, doi: 10.1177/0094582X13485706; and Natalja
Mortensen and Routledge.
Finally, many thanks to the collaborative efforts of my extended family,
who have commented on drafts and done all the other things that make life
worth living: Yvonne, Benjamin, Sara, Greg, Raj, Clyde, and Barbara.
Abbreviations

ADESOR National Association of the Unemployed (Asociación Nacional

de Desempleados)
AFM Articulación Feminista Marcosur
AMRC Asia Monitor Resource Centre
FEJUVE El Alto Federation of Neighborhood Councils
FNL Forces of National Liberation
FMNL Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front
FRAVM Federación Regional de Asociaciones de Vecinos de Madrid
FTAA Free Trade Area of the Americas
GAC Street Artists Group (Grupo de Arte Callejero)
GATT General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
GJM Global Justice Movement
GONGO government organized nongovernmental organization
ICC International Coordinating Commission (La Via Campesina)
IFAP International Federation of Agricultural Producers
IGO intergovernmental organization
ILO International Labour Organization
IMF International Monetary Fund
INGO international nongovernmental organization
IYC Intercontinental Youth Camp (World Social Forum)
JBG Junta de Buen Gobierno (Zapatista good governance councils)
KKPKP Kagad Kach Patra Kasthakari Panchayat
MFC Medico Friend Circle
MST Movement of Workers without Land
MTD Unemployed Workers Movement (Movimiento Trabajadores
Desempleados)
NAFTA North American Free Trade Agreement
OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
OFPFVII Organización Frente Popular Francisco Villa Izquierda
Independiente
S2S Sista II Sista
SDS Students for a Democratic Society
SKMS Sangtin Peasants and Workers Organization
SLG Sista’s Liberated Ground
SNCC Southern Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
TNC transnational corporation
U.N. United Nations
UNDRIP United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples
UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization
WB World Bank
WSF World Social Forum
WTO World Trade Organization
Part I
Rethinking Democratic Practice
Introduction
Democracy and Equality

Democracy promises rule by all, not by the few. Many communities and
organizations practice forms of democracy that give equal power to all
members. Yet, electoral states1 limit the participation of citizens to voting,
reserving most decision-making and policy development for small groups
of representatives and administrators. Electoral democracies often reinforce
or deepen the inequalities between political elites and ordinary citizens, rich
and poor, urban and rural, men and women, colonizers and the colonized,
workers and employers, educated and uneducated, and other social
divisions. Since state electoral practices limit the rule of all to rule by the
few, many communities have developed practices with stronger guarantees
for equal participation and equal outcomes. These equal practices beyond
state electoral democracy are our main topic.
The literal meaning of the English term “democratic” is rule by all: the
implementation of the principle of equal worth in governing their lives
without class or caste privilege.2 Equality is also implied by the Greek term
at the origin of the European term “democracy,” or rule (kratos) by the
people (demos).3 The term seems to claim equality for all, rule by the
people or popular sovereignty, not rule by the few.4 Yet, we know from
history that elected legislatures are often the main way by which national
governments are held accountable to the people,5 even when balanced by an
independent court system or a separate executive branch as in many modern
nation states.6 Those who believe in equality may ask how the poor and the
Indigenous, migrants and minorities, women and the underemployed, the
rural and the subaltern can all come to take charge of their lives through
democratic governance.7 Most electoral democracies are not held
accountable to these and other groups, and as a result, the policies of elected
leaders often make their lives difficult.
Historical practices also show that other obstacles exist to full
participation by different groups: the colonized and the enslaved (and their
descendants), workers and subsistence farmers, nonvoting immigrants and
refugees or exiles, the illiterate and uneducated rural poor, and other groups
excluded as a matter of course by ancient Athenian and modern English,
French, and U.S. democracies past and present. Since only a few rule and
governance is not carried out by all, the Greek term “democracy” as it has
been interpreted by those in modern Europe and North America is
misleading, a misnaming when applied to historical practice.8 Introducing
other democracies to this narrow range of Greek and Euro-American
democratic practices can make it possible to rethink democracy through
equality, a major goal for this book.
Equality in practice is limited in electoral states to formal political
equality, such as equal rights, like the right to vote, and other general
principles. The failure to produce equality outcomes in other parts of life,
such as economic equality and social or cultural equality, has often been
hidden in the past half century by this emphasis on formal political equality.
By forcing voters to limit their participation to leverage over delegated
representation, the modern electoral state weakens their ability to produce
equality in their economic, social, and cultural lives. By reducing their
equal democratic practice to participation through abstract political rights
and principles, modern electoral states prevent direct participation for those
who wish to produce economic, social, and cultural equality. Equal
outcomes may be electoral democracy’s weakest point.9
Since electoral states have proven vulnerable to increased inequality in
participation and outcomes, we look elsewhere for equality in practice in
this book. Communities and organizations beyond the state10 have built
egalitarian democratic structures to claim their power as equals to govern
their own lives. Many of them use councils and assemblies as broad-based
decision-making bodies, structures used widely in history and in the
present.11 Multiple communities use consensus or other practices instead of
voting for representatives. Both these practices reduce the centralization of
power in the hands of the few. They may do so as part of state governments,
or as parallel to or even in competition with the state in small communities
or in large territories and transnational networks. They do so not only in the
past but also in the present. They do so in rural settings and the largest
urban areas of the world, in families and towns, in farms and in everyday
affairs. They often do so in difficult and even impossible conditions, yet
they have succeeded for decades or centuries. Above all, they do so in order
to govern their own affairs in ways that actively and carefully avoid
reinforcing established inequalities in politics, economics, and other parts of
daily life. These communities and organizations show that there are many
avenues to equality beyond the electoral state. They show that democratic
equality is possible.
Democracy lives a troubled life, associated both with established political
orders and with street demonstrations that topple established political
orders. In the past, democracy unsettled the boundary between the rulers
and ruled, replacing kings and queens with rule by those who had once been
their subjects. In the present sites where democracy distributes power
equally to all, this equality may also threaten those who rule, whether
dictators or presidents, generals or prime ministers, aristocrats or elected
leaders. For this reason, democracy has been feared by many of those who
hold power, for it contains in its very name the idea that others might come
to rule. So, democracy has many enemies, even among those often called on
to explain democracy, from Aristotle and Kant to John Locke and James
Madison to Joseph Schumpeter and F.A. Hayek.12
Yet, advocating for democracy does not always promote equality and
social justice. Democracy is very popular, so the label “democracy” has
been used by the powerful to pursue narrow political interests, by political
parties to ensure they win elections, and by neoliberals to argue for policies
that increase inequality and weaken popular sovereignty. So, close attention
must be given to what form of democracy is being promoted; what
safeguards are in place to protect general interests beyond the narrow
interests of specific social groups; how decentralized are power relations;
what links are being established between the political and economic
spheres; and what relations are being constructed between members and
their Others.13 We will see that there are many specific tactics to produce
and protect equality, and they will be summarized in Appendix 1.
Emphasizing the concrete practices of equality and their outcomes shows
that equality is not a utopian pipe dream, not in the past, not nostalgia, and
not impossible. Many commentators and theorists of egalitarian practices
conveniently justify their own social privilege by arguing that equality is
impossible, or unreasonable, or inefficient, or only temporary, or only local
and not national, or maybe national but not big enough to go global.14
Despite their comments, we will see that egalitarian practices exist all over
the world, lasting many decades or centuries, effective under tremendous
stresses, and at scales ranging from the local to the national and global.
They may be seen as an interruption in unequal social orders, when “those
who have no right to be counted as speaking beings make themselves of
some account.”15 Equality is often put into practice in settings where it is
surrounded by institutions, everyday routines, and other forces that produce
inequality.16 In linking democracy to equality, these communities and
organizations strive to actualize in practice what some communities only
imagine in their distant futures: equal access to decision-making power in
governing their own affairs, and equality in resources and other concrete
relations. These communities are the primary subject of this book.
Rather than vague claims about abstract principles of equality, an
overview of concrete ways that people practice equality can reshape
thinking and theory about democracy.17 Emphasis on practice can also
prevent abstract, universalized ideals from expelling from the real18 those
communities and movements that carry out egalitarian democratic practices
and produce equal outcomes for their members.19 An emphasis on practice
refuses to give inequality the status of the fixed, immovable real seen in
terms like “structures” or “systems,” retaining a stronger sense that
practices can change.20 Historical contexts show that practice is not
completely free, since it is shaped by multiple forces that converge on
groups and individual subjects. But history also shows that democracies
depend on the everyday failures of historical forces to fix and determine
practice, thinking, and feeling.21 So, failures in these established forces
mean freedom. Those failures are where seemingly fixed relations and
subjugations may tremble and shift, where social identities and
appropriations may interrupt their own commonplace understandings,
where once-solid boundaries between reason and unreason may fracture,
where carefully calculated practices and strategies may fail, and where
change may take place22: change for individuals and changes for collectives,
for structures, for systems. They are also where equality becomes possible.
The chapters to come will introduce multiple ways to practice equality,
each situated within a specific political frame for democracy emerging from
a particular history.23 As the different forms of democratic practice diverge
from modern, centralized state electoral democratic practices, they will
prove impossible to combine into a single universal notion of democracy.24
After surveying the many differences at work in these concrete practices,
the term “democracy” may come to seem wholly inadequate to capture all
the different possible forms of self-governance by all. We will return to this
issue in Chapter 1 and the Conclusion.
Each specific practice of equality will also prove to be subject to
differences in ways that are impossible to consolidate and master,
ceaselessly exceeding efforts to tame difference into sense, persistently
inviting us to open avenues to Other possible democratic practices.25
Attention to difference produces these failures, failures that may be
constructive and productive. Rather than assuming that democracy produces
equality by some natural or universal process, equality may become a
problem to be addressed persistently over the long term.26 As naturalized
norms supporting inequality come into question, it will become possible to
end the violent subjection of different forms of democracy to those of
modern electoral states. The collapse of the universal opens avenues to
change and to equality.27
So, the many singular sites for democratic practice cannot be reduced to
some common democratic “truth.” Instead, we will find that the electoral
state democracies that claim a monopoly on universal democracy may come
through comparison to seem differently democratic or less democratic, if
not undemocratic. Like the others introduced here, the specific histories of
democracies in the United States, England, and France, often held up as
models for all democracies, depend on specific historical compromises,
often to the benefit of the wealthy and other narrow interests, rather than
serving all equally. Faced with many possible frames for democracy and
practicing equality, you as readers will be able to find your ethics not in
relativist multiplicity but in your responsibilities to those around you to
share power equally in practice.
Equality is an endangered principle, as we will see in Chapter 1. One
goal of this work is to reclaim the democratic arena for egalitarian practices.
Rather than ceding democracy to institutions and procedures that seem only
to increase inequality, the practices below ask us to reimagine what
democracy was, is, and may come to be in the future. Rather than granting a
monopoly claim on democracy to the representative state, we will find that
democracy is practiced in many other ways, in different scales and sites, in
different idioms and vocabularies, and that many of these practices come
from well beyond the pale of modern, Greek or European-derived
democratic models.

Democracy and Equality

The promise of equality28 is perhaps the single most powerful argument for
democracy. Some mechanisms for putting that claim to work are effective
in producing equality in practice. Yet, many widely accepted democratic
practices have long been closely associated with unequal political,
economic, and social relations. This problem has been very widespread in
national democracies, where the range of political parties available to
marginal social groups is limited and often does not meet the desires and
demands of marginal groups.29 As a result, many such groups and
communities have turned to their own practices to address their own hopes
and needs for equality, resulting in a proliferation of democratic
organizations operating alongside or outside of electoral systems. These
groups practice equality in multiple ways: equal participation in decision-
making; equality of resource distribution within the community or
organization; asserting equal power and dignity with surrounding structures
and organizations; and advocating for equity and fairness in material and
social relations when engaging with surrounding structures and
organizations. Through equal participation in decision-making, the
organizations and communities discussed below dedicate themselves to
securing equal resources, often addressing basic needs, and other modes of
equality for their members. While this results in various types of relations
with the modern state, as one historian noted, consensus-based participatory
organizations have often “tried to provide basic social services that
capitalist society did not supply.”30 These practices challenge us to rethink
the history of relations between democracy and other parts of life, such as
capitalism, health care and other social services, social and cultural
inequalities, and daily life.
Taking equality as central to democracy opens up these questions for
analysis and for changing practices.31 Those comfortable with inequality
often argue that all large-scale democracies require compromises with
hierarchical mechanisms, such as elected representatives, installing a
universal rule that full equality is impossible. Yet, these arguments about
the impossibility of full equality often serve to justify practices that increase
inequality.32 By arguing about abstract principles, such as equal rights and
equality of opportunity, these arguments divert attention from economic and
social inequality. Exploring concrete alternatives to state democracies that
produce inequality may supplement established thinking and theory. Taking
social and economic equality as central to democracy allows us to rethink
the limits of the political not only in the abstract but also in practice.
Changing from unequal access to political power into broad-based
participation is, as one critic writing about electoral democracies in the
global South suggested, “the missing link between representation and
substantive outcomes” that would make societies more equal.33 The struggle
over what “the people” say is precisely what is debated in democratic
spaces,34 so reducing or eliminating the mediating role of representatives
gives the people direct control over their own decisions. The different sites
for equality in practice in the chapters to come all share the practice of
equal participation, rather than electoral representation, as an institutional or
organizational commitment to equality.
Equality challenges existing social hierarchies and centralized power
relations.35 Practicing equality means refusing the programmatic terms that
have produced already established inequalities, such as the assumptions that
democracy must be centralized36 and carried out by the national elections.
Examining equality in practice means considering other means beyond
established mechanisms to share power in decisions that govern one’s own
affairs.37 An emphasis on equality also asks when equality is fully realized
and when it remains an empty promise. Equality beyond access to the ballot
box38 will prove both quite difficult to confirm for electoral democracies
and also surprisingly concrete in settings beyond the modern state. It will
also interrupt established, unequal social orders.39 Equality may prove very
useful to test democratic practices.
Do elections produce rule by all? The Greek thinkers Herodotus, Plato,
and Aristotle argued that electing leaders was an elitism contradicting
democratic ideals of equality.40 Even in the eighteenth-century Europe often
associated with the origins of modern democracy, many did not see
elections as democratic. Those in the French Revolution who saw
themselves as democrats were critical of elected officials because of their
autonomy from popular control and “avowed the position that
representatives were but a step from becoming new aristocrats.”41 Thomas
Paine saw representative systems as nondemocratic, and found the new U.S.
model to be “representation ingrafted upon democracy.”42 Opponents of
democracy among the founders of the United States, such as James
Madison, even pointed out that the “scheme of representation” meant that
the new thirteen-state republic was not “pure democracy.”43
In electoral democracies, how do we know when rule by the few
displaces rule by all, when oligarchy overtakes democracy? Since electoral
representative systems tend to install and reproduce elitist structures, this is
a central question for democracy. In the eighteenth century, Baron de
Montesquieu in Europe and the Federalists in North America, many of them
founding fathers of the United States, “all believed that modern government
had to be a mix of democracy and oligarchy, equality and inequality.”44
Representatives were rarely thought of as speaking for the general populace
until the twentieth century, when the expanding middle classes began to
develop a faith that, “for the first time, elected officials could truly be, in
J.A. Hobson’s phrase, ‘representatives of the community.’ ”45
One unsettling critique of established representative government systems
was developed by Carl Schmitt after World War I. Schmitt found that
parliamentary systems had become, after several decades of performance,
“the despised business of a rather dubious class of persons.”46 Schmitt went
on to elaborate a theory of modern politics that noted the centrality of the
exception, the moment when political elites are able to deploy exceptions to
the rule of law in the pursuit of their own narrow interests.47 Later critics
have found that the same problem characterizes specific political practices,
such as elected executive actions installing unpopular neoliberal policies48
and confronting attacks by enemies, as in the War on Terror.49 There has
been a resurgence of interest in these questions as globalization has come to
the fore of concerns about politics.50 If their wealth and autonomy from the
popular will makes elected representatives the aristocrats of democratic
systems,51 then their relationship to the egalitarian claims of democratic
systems needs to be critically considered.
Other bases for modern state claims to equality beyond voting are
citizenship and civil rights or human rights. Questions of who has access to
rights and citizenship in practice have consistently generated considerable
debate, and we will return to both these topics in future chapters. Another
aspect of equality claimed by modern states is equality under the law, one
foundation of constitutional governments. Many modern states claim that
all are subject to the law, so that all citizens, including heads of state and
other political elites, may be tried and convicted in a court of law. Yet,
judicial controversies about unequal punishment, state violence targeting
marginal groups, and exceptions for powerful individuals are well known
and persistent. Many modern states have not been able to guarantee equal
protection or to practice equal enforcement of the law. As these democratic
claims to equality are put into practice, they often are compromised
significantly enough that they produce inequalities in their social impacts.
In recent decades, support by electoral governments for policies that
widen economic inequality rather than produce equality has proven
controversial. The increasing wealth divides that have resulted both at home
and abroad have led to questions about the egalitarian outcomes of
democracy at home and abroad.52 In some circles, globalization is now seen
as a means to transform “democratization” into a restructuring that turns
national economies into tributary economies for financial markets.53 For
those focused on government services, the shredding of social safety nets
and the downsizing of governments under neoliberalism is seen as
producing increased resistance by social movements.54 There are many
ways in which equality has not resulted from electoral democratic practices.
Yet, equality is no simple matter. Claims to equality often are used to
obscure power differences in society55 and may perform “a useful fiction
designed both to conceal differences and to legitimate power.”56 Abstract
claims to equality often hide economic differences. Democracy has never
looked very good from below. Whether known as aristocracy (rule by those
best qualified) or oligarchy (rule by the few) or plutocracy (rule by the
wealthy), rule by the few has long been known to consistently result in
economic wealth inequality.57 Equality in the form of unity claimed by the
state or equal rights also hides the foundational violence of the state on
those whose territories it took to produce the territorially bounded state we
know as the modern nation. This founding violence has remained
particularly important for many minority groups who inherit other histories,
and also for others who understand any relation with the state as one of
violence.58 So, equality here carries both political and economic
implications.
Yet, inequality is not reducible to economics or overt violence.59 Equality
across everyday affairs comes, by the second half of the twentieth century,
to be named with special terms, a sign of the modern age’s difficulties with
making real the promise of equality: “deep democracy,” “prefigurative”
practice, and other terms to be reviewed in Chapter 1.60 The need for these
specialized terms signals that equality is no longer a norm, no longer
expected, no longer desired by everybody, no longer shared as an
assumption. The communities and movements presented in this book
demonstrate that, for some, equality does remain a norm and an assumption,
a hope and a dream, a performance and a practice.
Inequality is generally distributed across many oppositions, often dual
groupings shaped through modern understandings of difference: rich/poor,
friend/foe, citizen/noncitizen, colonizer/colonized, majority/minority,
elected representative/ordinary citizen, urban/rural, elder/younger,
local/outsider, modern/primitive, leader/follower, man/woman,
brother/sister, member/nonmember. While these binaries may seem
61

“natural” and fixed, we will find that they are quite unstable, as explored
later in this chapter. While these inequalities are topics of concern for many
of those examined in the coming chapters, they may be reconfigured into
relations that support equality in multiple ways.
Other differences may be obscured by efforts to attain equality as well.
Multiple types of inequality are often distributed along identity-based,
seemingly fixed social divisions. So, efforts to achieve gender or racial
equality may obscure differences within the identity categories, such as
those carried by binational or multiracial or transgender communities. Yet,
social identity divisions are not natural, but are produced through particular
historical practices that change over time.62 So, difference is also always
already active in any individual subject position or community.63 It is active
as the many possible meanings and avenues for action that are navigated
and appropriated from moment to moment. We will see later how difference
may continue working with equality in practice. Only by tracking the
differences still at work in each contingent, momentary formation of the
collective body may we retain some vigilance about unquestioned implicit
hierarchies and violences.
Perhaps the most telling aspects of a democratic community are the ways
in which representatives are held accountable to the multitudes, to the large
body of community members who claim ultimate sovereignty in
democracies. A central problem in the modern electoral state for those who
believe in equality is that “[r]epresentative government gives no
institutional role to the assembled people.”64 Instead, representative
democracy isolates individuals as voting citizens, and grants a monopoly on
power to elected leaders.
So, how is accountability ensured in other democratic practices? One
way is through the assembly or council, the place where all have the ability
to speak to the community as it gathers together to make its decisions. This
ability to speak may at times be only to comment on proposals and policies
developed elsewhere by small numbers of specialists or factions.
In stronger versions of egalitarian practice, those who speak in the
assembly also participate in developing proposals. Perhaps the most
important practice of all for equality, one found in all the sites examined
below, is equality in participation in the development and drafting of
community policies and decisions. This form of equality makes all
community or organization members equal in status, though other
differences certainly remain. For these groups, equality is found in internal
community relations, in addition to happening in their interactions with
surrounding social relations.65 A broad range of social movements over the
past decades have pursued these practices as a way of implementing ideals
without having to wait for democratic practices to materialize on a larger
scale.66 These practices remove the need for a smaller group of
representatives and policy experts, going against the tradition of much
Euro-American democracy of the past decades. An emphasis on process
becomes central to the outcomes of social organizations and movements
that practice internal democratization, as we will see time and again in the
coming chapters.
Broad participation in decision-making allows the political body to
constitute itself through discussions in large groups. Through these large
bodies, the community shapes itself in ways that are not always predictable,
since the presence of many means that new shared identities and interests
might emerge through the meeting process itself.67 Indeed, the instability of
such large-group deliberations may be contrasted with governance
operating along established identities and fixed interests, such as political
party platforms or identity programs.68 For communities threatened with the
loss of basic needs or state violence, the ability to practice these
unpredictable, imaginative collective responses is often not a luxury but a
survival strategy.69 As the community produces the “we” of the community
in the specific moment of the group assembly, the openness of the
democratic process becomes most visible. This openness emerges as the
boundaries between different groups are cast into doubt, and the many
possible differences at work within the particular community renegotiate
differences within the community.70
Bringing equality back to the center of democracy invigorates the critical
dimension of democracy. In an ironic turn, democracy as a political system
is closely associated for many with both the French and American
Revolutions, but it has come to usually mean not revolution but stability,
not social change but fixed order. And that social order is not equal. By
asking about equality, participants in an institution can change its practices
when they find it unsatisfactory.71
Rather than assuming that equality is already in place, equality becomes
a question. If democracy means a promise of equality, then democracy may
shift from something almost already achieved to a point of persistent
vigilance, a site of demand and negotiation with long-established violences,
and a place to bear witness.72 Rather than democracy understood as
something installed long ago by the English and the U.S. and the French
and then by all other constitutional democracies, democracy as a question
may have many answers beyond those of the modern liberal state. Instead,
answers in the search for equality may come from beyond the views of the
Europeans and their imitators, beyond liberalism and modern pluralism,
beyond essences and universal claims. Equality may require logics and
calculations Other to those of the modern individual and European
Enlightenment concepts of rights, Other to the modern state and the ballot
box, Other to the limits of the public sphere and modern notions of the
political.73
At stake is the sovereignty of the people, democracy as rule by all.
Democracy promises to be a mechanism for the rule of the people to
displace the rule of monarchs and oligarchs, aristocrats and dictators,
autocrats and plutocrats. Taking equality as the center of democratic
practice shows that the unequal compromises made in the histories of the
modern Greco-European state are not necessary, unavoidable, or inevitable.
Rather than capturing some single, universally true meaning of democracy,
the next section shows how the modern, European-derived use of the term
“democracy” is only one set of a much broader range of practices. Rather
than taking European electoral democracy to be a universally accepted
political practice, we can ask for the proof of democracy in equality for all.
Democracy as Misnaming

Taking equality as the center of democratic practice shows that many

practices don’t carry out democracy. Before assuming that European and
other modern electoral systems have captured democracy and perfected it,
we may test that assumption by asking about equality. Despite the persistent
claims of many states to democratic practice, we can give careful attention
to various slippages, oversights, exclusions, exceptions, appropriations,
colonizations, invasions, persecutions, violent relations, and other verifiable
events to see whether the egalitarian promise of democracy has been
fulfilled. The next chapter is where we will explore the competing ways in
which the meaning of the term has been shaped to these particular political
purposes.
If democratic practices do not produce equality, then why do those
practices carry that name?74 Many who identify with modern legislative
systems take a single, local democratic tradition and globalize it as a
universal model for all people. This assumption claims that European-
derived representative democracies perform the essential, universalist
meaning of the modern term. In this approach to democracy, the only terms
allowed to remain open for debate are the precise meaning of the presumed
essential institutions for modern democracy: constitutions, regular elections,
civil liberties, the right to vote, equality under the law, and some other
public rights. From this narrow perspective, democratic progress takes place
when democracy is able to spread globally by transporting key institutions
out of the countries where it is fully realized (such as France or the United
States) to other countries where they do not exist or need to be
strengthened. This understanding of democracy is highly controversial,
since its emphasis on European-derived notions of political practice is
linked to spreading democratic institutions in ways that at times have
required violent interventions.75
Taking a single term from a particular local context and applying it to all
cases is what might be called appropriation.76 If our only models for
democracy come from Europe and its settler colonies, then that single
meaning reduces many contested meanings and histories to the terms and
limits of the modern European concept.77 This approach, in effect, colonizes
popular sovereignty.78 This maneuver conveniently erases one of the
fundamental contradictions of those modern states: they claim equality in
political practice even as they have produced racialized, class-stratified,
gendered, and other inequalities at home and abroad.
This long-standing problem has been exacerbated in the last twenty years
as the United States and other industrialized nations have more openly
eroded democratic practices, so that the egalitarian character of their
democracy has come under sharp attack. Some have concluded that the
United States is now an oligarchy79 rather than a democracy, while others
have argued that France has never been hospitable to democracy,80 or
perhaps has been only hostile to democracy since the Third Republic.81 We
will discuss these problems further in the next chapter.
Examining practice shows that specific histories have often produced
compromises that make equality impossible. Ancient Athens in Greece may
have claimed egalitarianism both in voting in the assembly and in equality
under the law. Yet, assembly votes were often subordinated in various ways
to the decisions of the council, a much smaller group of a few hundred
highly educated, elite men who shaped the policies that were brought to the
assembly for debate and vote. While the grounds for access to the council
were changed from being based on blood descent to being based on wealth
in the Solonian Constitution of the early sixth century bce,82 the assembly
dominated Athenian democratic practices only under the leadership of
Pericles (c.495–429 bce) in the mid-fifth century (c.461–429 bce).83 Soon,
the increasing importance of war close to home and the antidemocratic
revolution of 411 bce plunged Athens into the Peloponnesian War, so that
less and less power resided in the assembly and more was retained by
political and social elites.84 By the time of Plato and Aristotle, Athenian
opponents of rule by the many had won the day, as the philosophers’
distrust and fear of democracy shows. Obstacles to equality were present
for many residents in Athens: those who worked for wages or who lived in
the countryside; women, slaves, and low-paid workers; the elderly; young
people under the age of eighteen; those who resided abroad in the empire;
and those who were from the colonized territories.85 In this sense, the
Athenian notion of democracy is not a good model for democracy, due to its
multiple compromises with aristocratic rule and with rule by wealthy
merchants, by oligarchy.
Modern national governments reproduce many of these same
weaknesses. Councils like those in ancient Athens were historical vestiges
of the inequalities of aristocratic governance, not unlike the British House
of Lords in the modern period or the U.S. Senate up until 1913. Those who
begin the story of constitutional guarantees of universal human rights with
the 1215 Magna Carta in England forget that the agreement was signed by
nobles interested in limiting royal power and did little for commoners. The
English Revolutions of 1648 and 1688–9 did establish supremacy of the
parliament over the monarchy, but parliament was populated primarily by
aristocrats and wealthy landowners. The French Revolution of 1789 was
followed by a gradual process of negotiated compromises with the
monarchy, such as the constitutional monarchy of 1830, the empire of
Napoleon and his son, and the wealthy bourgeoisie, who were influential in
the 1830s and 1840s and again after 1870, when elected legislative bodies
and the republic were first established. So, the general public had little
impact on French democracy, outside of the overthrow of the monarchy in
1789 and the establishment of broad male suffrage as an outcome of the
1848 revolution. The willingness of the wealthy merchants to accept the
compromises of the nineteenth century that led to the electoral system
shows that accountability to the general public has been profoundly
compromised through the electoral system since the 1870s.
In the United States, the rural democrats and city artisans who pressed for
greater popular participation in determining their affairs were successful in
pressuring those who drafted state constitutions during the U.S. Revolution
to open participation to all males, for example by reducing property
ownership requirements.86 As one commentator notes, “instead of
empowering the people, the American Revolution wound up empowering a
tiny slaveholding elite.”87 The constitution also empowered a tiny elite
through enlarging the House district size to make it prohibitively expensive
to run for office88 and the famous three-fifths valuation of slaves that gave
their owners a third more seats in the House and the Electoral College,
while the Senate design of two seats per state and supermajorities required
for constitutional change guaranteed that southern states would keep slavery
safe from northern reform.89 The transformation of the Senate from
legislative to popular election in 1913 did little to transform other obstacles
to popular participation: the Electoral College’s role in presidential
elections; limits to universal suffrage past and present; and the outsized role
of the wealthy in election campaign financing.
The continuities between ancient Athenian compromises with practices
giving wealthy elites unequal advantages and those of our own day suggest
why the ancient Greek example has appeal to elected leaders and their
theorists who would justify inequality. As the modern European
parliamentary systems and constitutional framework have spread globally
since the nineteenth century, various changes and adaptations have certainly
been instituted. Yet, the limits on full participation established by electoral
systems that emerged from European and U.S. compromises have rarely
been challenged. These limits consistently leave the highly educated, often
wealthy elites who run successfully for election with a distinct advantage in
shaping policies, determining the fine print in legislation to benefit their
narrow interests, and determining which countermeasures are put in place
and how they are enforced.
The pursuit by Athenian leaders of empire, from the time of Pericles
through the rule of Aristotle’s patron, Alexander the Great, and their
practice of slavery should be familiar to the European nations that claim
democracy and at the same time practiced slavery and pursued empire.
These practices are unequal on the face of it, and have not been overlooked
in the communities and movements to be discussed in the chapters to come,
since many are made up of members of colonized Indigenous groups,
descendants of slaves, and others who oppose both of these practices. For
these reasons, many communities that have developed broadly participatory
democratic practices do not turn to Greece and Northern European or U.S.
practices as their model.
Three examples of how misleading are the modern European meanings
for democracy show the problem of misnaming more concretely. El
Salvadorian and Brazilian neighborhoods have mobilized themselves
through participatory decision-making to manage their own affairs and
make demands of local governmental bodies. These highly participatory
mechanisms, which have evolved in different ways from the 1980s into the
present, have included neighborhood councils and workplace self-
management, participatory budgeting and policy-writing mechanisms.90 To
call these activities “democracy” in the Greco-European sense is simply
incorrect, since they include only mass meetings and do not include the
delegates and representatives of the Greek council or the modern European
elected legislative bodies. Yet, they are clearly practices of self-governance
of a community’s own affairs.
If we take the Okanagan notion of en’owkinwiwx Indigenous to the land
now claimed by Canada, we might mistakenly translate it with the Greco-
European term “democracy.” European-derived assumptions about
democracy would make it difficult to recognize the workings of the
Okanagan methods of leadership. This is because en’owkinwiwx
representatives are trained to speak for the land and for the water or for
particular groups in their community (elders, artists, young people, etc.) and
not for individuals or even families. The Okanaga also practice methods
honoring the minority voice as indicators of “things that are going wrong,
the things we are not looking after, …. the things we’re not being
responsible toward, the things we’re … trying to overlook and sweep under
the carpet or shove out the door.”91 These practices give a very strong
presence to important elements in any community, such as land and water,
that are often overlooked in modern electoral systems. They also honor
minorities and the excluded or exiled, forms of equality that are not found
in modern Greco-European practices.
Even when some people use the term “democracy” to describe their
political participation, they may have something in mind dramatically
different from the Greco-European sense of the term. In Indigenous
thinking from the Andean highlands, the meaning of democracy and
sovereignty to some Indigenous communities of Peru, Bolivia, and
Argentina is entangled with notions of fertility, growth, and the unknown.92
In one reading of peasant workers and their urban descendants, resistance to
the two political parties of “bourgeois democracy or incendiary Marxism”
comes from seeing the real as “opening to another dimension … where the
imponderables have weight and where thinking … transcends perception.”93
This leads to a consistent rejection of the programmatic, objectifiable and
quantitative “real” of European modes of governance.94 This presents a
problem much larger than one of linguistic translation. In the next chapters,
our inquiries into many practices will give attention to the differences that
allow what may seem at first similar to modern European meanings to still
resist that reduction. At certain points in the chapters to come, similar
misnamings will be discussed explicitly, but every time the term
“democracy” appears, the question of appropriation will haunt it.
When we avoid collapsing the differences of each specific democratic
practice into a single universalized category derived from ancient Athens or
modern Europe and its settler colonies, we can reduce the appropriations
and the colonizing effects of democratic practices. When the appropriations
under the modern state of the multiple possible forms of democracy become
visible, critical inquiry into other possible practices and forms that might
take place as “democracy” may begin.
This is particularly relevant in a world shaped by colonial histories,
where the claim by colonial languages to universalist meanings produces
forms of cultural difference structured through unequal exchange. Such
exchange reduces possible competitors for universal value to cultural
particularities, and “dictates the degree and magnitude of sacrifice that one
language must make in order to achieve some level of commensurability”
and recognizability within the limits of another language.95 Refusing the
claim to universality of the Greco-European term “democracy” opens up
multiple possible horizons for democratic practice. This opening up of
limits and horizons takes place not only in theory but among historical
approaches tested in difficult circumstances, past and present, by various
communities and organizations.
There is no single, universal meaning for the term, but multiple forms,
each operating within a specific history. I will continue to deploy the term
“democracy” to dislodge the meaning set in stone by the Euro-American
electoral state, which has shown that it fails to produce equality. The
coming displacements and renegotiations of the term will take democratic
practices in directions not possible under modern Eurocentric colonizing
limits. Problematizing the term allows a refusal of these limits while
attempting to wrest it from the monopoly usage by those who claim the
Greek and European term as its one and only “proper” usage.96 In working
through this study with multiple lineages across highly politicized and
contested social divisions, the term “democracy” will come to be
recognized as a misnaming, a proximate term that is troubled, misleading,
appropriating, colonizing, and requiring critical interrogation.

Difference and Democracy

Struggles over claims to democracy shape a high-stakes battleground. They

occur on different scales, some openly contested and others hidden from
public awareness. Open struggles over claims to democracy are often
headline news, as in nineteenth-and early twentieth-century battles for the
right to vote for slaves and women, or as mass movements in Argentina or
Egypt take to the streets to remove their elected leaders. Other times,
submerged struggles for democracy may not come to public awareness,
such as when groups are systematically excluded from participation by
voting regulations, violence, or internalized enforcement of social norms.
At stake in these struggles are popular perceptions of social inequalities,
and whether or how they might be transformed. For our purposes, we will
explore ways that the abstract claims of democracy to equality are put into
practice by giving attention to the many different ways that equality is
conceived and measured, calculated, and enacted across various
differences.97
One of the strengths claimed by democracy is that it provides an arena
for engagement with difference. Yet, there are many ways to encounter
difference. Modern democracy claims to provide a structural site for the
resolution of debate and even conflict between those who hold different
opinions and who occupy different locations in unequal social locations.
Yet, democracy may also appear to resolve debates and conflicts without
respecting differences, leaving power inequalities in place. The pervasive
character of these differences produces persistent but not insoluble issues in
practice.98
A signal weakness of democratic theory is the difficulty in naming and
recognizing those who for various reasons are structurally blocked from
public debate, or do not have the same access to citizenship as others, or are
not heard in mass media, or who do not use the logics and protocols of
“responsible” citizenship, or who refuse the terms and norms of an
established social regimen and ordered inequality. Bringing difference into
considerations of claims to equality asks questions of power, naming and
recognition, and Otherness.
A focus on difference allows us to interrupt universal claims to equality.
Claiming equality may seem to produce sameness for all those with
different access to power and those with different places in social
hierarchies.99 Yet, several types of difference consistently remain in the sites
for equality to be discussed. First, community members who participate
equally in governance do so only by distinguishing themselves from those
who are seen as outsiders or “Other” to their community. Second, within
many of the communities explored below, democratic practices are always
also sites of struggle between those who speak often and those who do not,
those who can attend all the assembly meetings and those who cannot, those
who belong and those who do not, and many other differences. The
following chapters show that the democratic assembly or council where
everybody appears equal and all seem to have equal rights to participate
remains a site of difference.
In addition, since equality has often been used to hide or erase
differences in democratic governance,100 equality must be addressed in
terms that give central attention to different power relations. When long-
standing practices of unequal access to democratic mechanisms provide the
groundwork for governance, most visibly in cases of the rural Indigenous
and the poor, then these inequities produce differences that may escape the
notice of non-Indigenous or nonminority and urban middle-class
participants. When fixed racial or ethnic, economic, gender, sexual, or
colonial identities or clearly defined political party and narrow interest
group politics are the primary factors shaping difference, then a democratic
focus on the general interest is often lost.101 These problems have been very
widespread in representative national democracies, where the range of
political parties available to marginal social groups is limited and often does
not meet their full range of desires or demands.
As a result, many such groups have turned to their own movements and
organizations to address their own needs, resulting in broad ranges of
democratic organizations operating outside the terms and logics of the
modern, Euro-American-derived electoral state. Sometimes you will
encounter the term “singular” to identify these terms and logics, not
because they are one in a group of many but because they resist the
categories often used in modern language to describe and generalize about
specific cases. Discussion of many of these democratic practices will
introduce bases and frames for democracy that are Other to those of the
modern, European-derived electoral state. Assumptions and logics
operating in these Other democratic practices exceed the limits of what is
expected, allowed, or possible under the terms enforced by the modern
state.102
Finally, difference is also found in other ways beyond opinions and
identities, insiders and outsiders, languages and assumptions, political
parties and ideologies. The discussions to follow see difference not only as
a contrast of two or more coherent things or events that carry meaning.
Rather, difference also shapes our understanding of anything through its
Others, through those things or events that are seen as opposed to it.103 In
other words, difference as used here will refer to the Others that are
inevitably produced when something seems to exist, and which remain as
something like a supplement.104 So, an object or event that seems to exist
independently is always haunted by the Others that make it possible or
recognizable as distinct from those with which it is conventionally
contrasted, those things that seem to be different from it but on which the
object depends at its founding.105 For example, a modern nation exists only
in dependence on those with which it is contrasted: Indigenous
communities or a pre-modern kingdom or another political body conquered
by the nation, or the Other nations nearby, or the form the nation took in
previous (or future) decades when territorial boundaries differed.
Traces of these differences persist implicitly each time a particular nation
or other entity is invoked or produced through force. These traces determine
a nation or other thing through contrast while also being displaced by the
particular nation in its attempts to present itself as unified. These Others are
sometimes even violently displaced and erased, as seen most clearly by
those who may still identify with Indigenous communities or conquered
political entities or by those who do not recognize themselves in the
divisions offered by the nation: this nation, or the nation next door? The
nation now, or the nation as it was in the past? Attention to differences may
make these internal violences, divisions, displacements, erasures, and other
antagonisms visible, allowing the enforced unity of coherent objects or
events to be considered critically and even rejected.106
From this viewpoint, ethical approaches to difference take into account
those Others that must be pushed out of view when any object or event is
made to seem to exist independently. The Others forced to appear absent
may be brought into visibility through ethical practice. For example,
equality in practice is often a matter of finding those who do not seem
present in democratic practice and producing a new form of democratic
practice that allows them to participate and benefit from collective
governance. One central topic in the chapters to come will be how the
Others produced in specific sites of equality in practice may become
recognizable, reasserting their presence and interrupting the unequal politics
of the ways many normally see them.
This mode of difference is also present in this book. In Part I, a few
specific contrasts will seem to shape the entire argument of this book: the
few vs. the many; the elites vs. the people; electoral vs. assembly; particular
vs. universal; vertical vs. horizontal; Europe vs. non-Europe; modern logics
vs. Other logics. Yet, we will see in the chapters to come that these contrasts
open questions that are not easily resolved, point out blind spots in enforced
norms and practices, or unearth multiplicities rather than shared universals.
None of these contrasts will be as solid as they may appear here, early in
the project, and we will return to them in our Conclusion.
In this notion of difference, relations are very mobile and unstable, since
the limited contrasts that make understanding anything possible may be
revised, rewritten, reenacted, or even reversed at any time. Attention to
difference may revise the limited possibilities, change the present by
changing the way the past and future are understood, broaden artificially
narrowed horizons, or introduce that which seems completely Other, even
monstrous or incomprehensible.107 While certain practices and historical
conditions attempt to limit this instability, renegotiating those limits is one
way in which a certain type of freedom always remains. This freedom is not
limited to the individual freedoms promoted in modern Europe and its
settler colonies, but may allow collective freedom, community freedom,
and flexibility to rewrite limits and horizons. This freedom makes change
possible.108 Where inequality and social hierarchy are entrenched as normal
and natural, this freedom may make equality possible.
One limit on the openness of state democracy is its restriction to the
terms of the modern “rational.” These limitations privilege the principles
and practices of groups that appear “reasonable” within these limits, and
sacrifice the meaning and autonomy of groups that do not follow European
“reason.”109 If we open democracy up beyond the limits of modern,
European-derived “reason,” democracy will come to be a site for
negotiation between multiple heterodoxies that may or may not conform to
a single code of reason. By being critical of the appropriation of democracy
within modern European forms of “reason,” we will encounter modes of
democracy and equality that are Other to modern Europe and its political
and intellectual heritage.
Calculations of minority status are important if democracy is understood
in terms of electoral representation and population demographics. However,
the approach used in this exploration does not accept this approach to these
groups, since it is often used to discount and demean, dehumanize and
disrespect minority, Indigenous, and subaltern communities. Instead, each
frame for equality in practice will be situated in its historic context, and an
attempt will be made to understand the different ways in which they
calculate equality. As a result, the following chapters work to replace
established methods of calculation based on party politics and obsessions
with access to national democracy. The resulting incalculable, and in some
senses undecidable, modes of establishing equality to come invite readers to
consider democracies at work in other registers, scales, and sites beyond
that of the modern liberal state.
Other logics are often at work in democratic practices by a group known
as the subaltern.110 Historians of popular movements in the global South
have suggested that an autonomous political domain has long existed
parallel to the elite politics of colonial, national, and neocolonial or
postcolonial institutions.111 This subaltern domain was not destroyed or
rendered ineffective by colonialism, but instead adapted and in other ways
interacted with elite political practices, such as legalist or constitutionalist
practices.112 Some use the term “subaltern” for the nonelite participants in
this domain, a political sphere that contrasts with a domain appearing to be
under elite political domination, such as the nation state. The notion of the
subaltern was developed in 1920s Italian rural organizing and South Asian
history initially to name nonelite groups, such as rural farmers, the
unemployed urban poor, and at times the lower sections of the middle
classes.113 Here, the term will be used to indicate women and men in the
global South who cannot gain entrance into the public sphere and the
circuits of capitalist social mobility under market capitalism or market
socialism. Subaltern communities often utilize logics that diverge from
those of modern, middle-class societies.
The existence of subalterns means that those who dominate state policies
have failed to speak for the nation, since they have not been willing to
distribute the benefits of national administration across all social groups.
For those who have not benefitted from constitutional governments or
capitalist development or other “modern” institutions and practices, modern
democracy comes to mean a “constitutive exclusion from the political
whose form is unintelligibility.”114 Their self-governing behaviors take the
form of “resistance that cannot be recognized as such,” since their activities
occur in terms that are not recognizable as the actions of full citizens.115
Equality may not be calculated using the same criteria that produce modern
inequality, as one commentator suggests:
 One person eats well by keeping five hundred starving, one person
graduates college while six hundred remain illiterate, and one person
buys an apartment keeping how many hundred homeless, such
complicated ratios. No ratio has ever been calculated from the position
of [unlettered rural tribals]…. But the first obligation is to calculate the
ratio from the position of [these tribals].116

Ethics here might become a kind of haunting by the subaltern, understood

as a persistent effort to recognize the limits of common political identities
as they persistently erase their subalterns, their Others.117 We will explore
the reasoning of their equality in practice in the chapters to come.
Collective coercion is the shadow that falls over every political
discussion, since pressures for collectively binding resolutions are present
in political processes.118 Coercion may be found when groups that differ
from social norms are targeted because their presence opens up alternatives
that may disrupt established political and cultural routines central to a
society. Encountering these disruptions may produce discomfort and make
building relations difficult, and this is when coercive compulsion becomes
likely at the level of the state or other collective coercions.119 As difference
opens up questions of power relations in democratic practices, it is
important to cautiously assess whether or not the way that difference is
deployed reproduces any of several forms of coercion that may shadow
particular circumstances.
In this way, democracy may become a place where difference refuses
reconciliation.120 Differences that cannot be consolidated are always at risk
in the face of those who would order, protect, and enforce by abstract,
universalized principles the “reason” of the select few. For those who do not
wish to operate in terms of a single system of meaning, the impossibility of
representing something completely Other becomes central to democracy.121
Democracy in this sense is precisely that practice which maintains vigilance
for the violences done on those who are consistently left out of liberal
democratic practices, such as human rights.122 In this conception, difference
becomes as central to democracy as equality might be.
Difference, in this approach to democracy, depends on specific factors at
work historically and locally. If the egalitarian participatory practices
involve the shaping of interests through the deliberative assembly, then the
established interests of identitarian politics and party politics may be
destabilized and transformed.123 If participation is open to all adults,
engaging in democratic arenas such as the large assembly puts demands on
each collective or individual participant to redefine themselves in terms of
their relation to the whole, to the common good.124 The very notion of the
common good may be built in multiple ways that allow different norms and
assumptions to engage without unity, without difference being erased in the
narrow interests of any particular group.
One particular difference for this book is that between Europe and non-
Europe. Yet, Europe is made central to an analysis of democracy only when
modes of democracy associated historically with Europe are able to
colonize democracy as a form of self-governance. Equality may also seem
to be a European concept emerging from the eighteenth century. Yet, for
this project, democracy and equality are not associated primarily with
Europe. Indeed, European models of democracy, which tend to reduce
democracy to electoral practices and some version of liberal freedoms and
rights, may come to seem to be a travesty of democracy, a dystopia, a
failure.125 Many political claims that are most urgent must be tacitly
recognized as coded within the legacy of imperialism: nationhood,
constitutionality, citizenship, democracy, socialism, even culturalism. This
series of regulative political concepts, whose supposedly authoritative
narrative of production was written in the social formations of Western
Europe, must be displaced if political action is to do anything beyond the
limits set by the modern electoral state. Displacing democracy and equality
in this limited sense is a major goal of this book, so that they may be
claimed as practices for which no historically adequate referent may be
found.126
The following chapters show that in claiming to mediate differences,
democracy holds the potential for destabilizing what appear to be fixed
positions, normative logics, and entrenched boundary lines of conflicting
group collectivities, such as national or other identities. Rather than
assuming fixed narrow interests, such as those of political parties, the
egalitarian democratic moments of the mass assembly and the consensus
resolution become the site where community and the common good are
produced. If difference shapes the Others of the participatory body, then
democracy may become a place for ethical encounters with those Others.127
These encounters both produce collective bodies and interrogate them,
asking about limits and inequalities that remain. In this questioning,
established limits and inequalities may remain open to new negotiations, to
determinations by as yet unknown Others.128
The community itself is transformed through these practices rather than
stabilized by them,129 reconstituting itself through each assembly or town
meeting and the many practices that bring people together. Rather than
seeing the “community” being governed democratically as a fixed entity
that preexists this process called “democracy,” we may come to see the
democratic process as the means by which the different relations of the
community are called into being, reinforced (or transformed), and continued
(or discontinued).130 Renegotiating and reconstituting difference then
becomes one of the primary workings of democracy. This is what we may
mean by democracy with a differance.
The centrality of difference for egalitarian democracy makes the concrete
practices discussed later a challenge to our assumptions, a confrontation
with what we know already about equality and democracy. Those practices
that do not look like Euro-American representative democracy have
something important to say about democracy. Many unfamiliar democratic
practices carry solutions to problems that have proven difficult for electoral
national democracies to overcome. But they can carry their meaning and
solve these problems only if they are allowed to broaden our horizons and
enrich our analysis.

Democracy to Come

Democracy as the practice of equality takes many forms in the chapters to

come. This proliferation of different forms may open democracy to future
social relations that diverge from modern democratic inequality. This
opening allows democracy to respond to difference, however difference
may be constituted, understood, practiced, and passed down into the
future.131 As democracy opens to the Other, this event interrupts what is
often seen as the “real” of democracy and the limited ways to measure
equality in the present.132 Such an intervention allows the Others of the
modern state to join in democratic equality. We will return to these topics in
each chapter conclusion to investigate how democracy and equality with a
differance are found in practice.
 The communities and organizations discussed in the chapters to come
also consolidate their differences with their Others on an everyday basis.
These constructions take place when they determine and revise criteria for
membership, exclusions that constitute their politics, and often distinctions
between central and marginal members. Each of these consolidations is
risky even while necessary: they reinforce established limits or establish
new outsiders, and even enemies, while also producing the boundaries that
stabilize the group within the terms and logics of the site. We examine in
each chapter how each site for equalizing practices interacts with those
Others who support equality and those who do not. Each chapter will
demonstrate how opening democracy to Others reshapes the concrete
impacts of equality in practice, and it will show different ways in which
equality may be understood and calculated in the “real” beyond access to
the ballot box and other abstract rights.
To lay the groundwork for the specific practices in Chapters 2 to 6, the
present chapter and our next chapter serve as Part I, reopening the contested
character of democracy to concrete practices found outside the assumptions
of the modern electoral state. An overview in Chapter 1 starts us off with
some limits to democracy produced by specific interested social groups
through attacking their Others as nondemocratic: monarchy, aristocrats and
autocrats, the poor and the Indigenous, the masses of the people themselves,
the popular assembly, and others. A sketch of democracy in history shows
how abstract, general claims to equality often hide unequal and even violent
historical outcomes of democratic mechanisms. I also briefly survey
liberalism and a few established types of state democracy. These forms are
supplemented with egalitarian practices from social movements and other
communities beyond the state. I close with a discussion of the instability of
the boundary between liberalism and its others, demonstrating how liberal
democracy overlaps at times with those practices to which it is often
opposed: oligarchy, plutocracy, autocracy, and the incalculable.
Part II presents four chapters, each introducing three or four specific
communities and organizations working with egalitarian practices in
assemblies and otherwise to determine their own affairs. I give attention to
the concrete political practices in the context of their specific histories
under the inadequate categories of Indigenous groups (Chapter 2), subaltern
communities (Chapter 3), popular movements (Chapter 4), and global
organizations and networks (Chapter 5). The particular histories
demonstrate how submerged issues surface, forgotten practices revive,
traditions transform, and other traces of difference and freedom have made
equalizing practices possible even as multiple inequalities remain in each
site. Particular attention will be given in these chapters to the misnamings
and other appropriations and colonizations at work in these sites coming
from nationalism, liberalism, colonization, globalization, and other sources.
I begin by considering in Chapter 2 those that often preceded the modern
nation state: the Indigenous or First Nations. Many Indigenous communities
have long practiced forms of egalitarian governance and representative
sovereignty that may be called broadly democratic. I explore two groups
that have organized their sovereignty in a manner in dialogue with the
liberal state, the Aymara of Latin America and the Karen of Southeast Asia,
even though neither group may be identified with any single nation. Then, I
introduce two confederations of multiple Indigenous groups: the
Haudenosaunee or Iroquois Confederacy that was so central to the origins
of the United States, and several Indigenous groups that are collectively
active in the Zapatista movement of southern Mexico.
Subaltern communities cut off structurally from the state, from policy
debate, and from social mobility have found many ways to govern their
own affairs, and they are the topic for Chapter 3. These social sectors, often
the poorest of the poor, also make up the majority of the world’s democratic
citizens, and so would be important if elections were not held only in
nationalist terms.133 Since they are blocked in some ways from the
determining pressures of the modern state and capitalism, subaltern
communities often deploy logics and assumptions that differ from those of
European modernity, as well as tactics for avoiding and parodying the
calculations of the Eurocentric modern that are used to claim state resources
and achieve state accountability. By advocating for infrastructural change
and building collectivities aimed at gendered social relations not suitable
for modern states, subaltern communities may produce a democratic
general will that would be difficult to appropriate under capitalist-centered
democratic practices.134 This chapter draws on subaltern practices from rural
and urban Brazil, India, and Venezuela to counter the overemphasis on
urban middle-class citizens and their liberal interests when considering
democracy.
Social movements have often been the prime movers in pressuring
political bodies to adopt democratic means accountable to all at the national
and other levels, since electoral practices are very weak leverage points for
accountability to all. In Chapter 4, I use the contested term “popular” not, as
it is sometimes used, as a synonym for mass movements often dominated
by the middle class but to introduce social movements that work to hold
governance practices accountable to all. Many of these groups are critical of
state democracy and party politics even as they continue to be shaped by the
terms of the state/non-state binary. These social movements have been
particularly critical of increasing inequality due to the neoliberal weakening
of regulatory mechanisms at the national level, as well as financial
globalization and the lack of citizen accountability for globalized
governance mechanisms that are being promoted by nations. We will
explore the construction of egalitarian social spaces by those of European
and mixed Indigenous descent in Argentina after 2001 as well as a
collective of feminist women of color in New York City. The
transformation into the political party Podemos of the 15-M or indignados
(the enraged) anti-austerity movement in Spain will be studied to critically
examine the limits of egalitarian practices.
Discussions of globalization are often limited by liberal proponents of
corporate interests to practices by transnational and intergovernmental
bodies (IGOs) shaped by the centralized modern state, by the transnational
corporation (TNC), or by the centralized international nongovernmental
organizations (INGOs) that some see as making up transnational civil
society. Chapter 5 introduces grass-roots organizations and networks that
deploy decentralized egalitarian self-governance. This is often explicitly
opposed to transnational governance growing out of the nation state, IGOs
such as the World Bank or the World Trade Organization, and INGOs.
Egalitarian practices for this chapter are drawn from three sites: the
global farmer organization known as La Via Campesina; the networked
collaborations of local organizations opposed to globalization and regional
trade agreements known as the Global Justice Movement (GJM); and the
transnational network that produces the regular meetings of the World
Social Forum (WSF ). Their objectives are

not to produce consensus or a general will to be channeled to

representative institutions, but to facilitate linkages among self-
organizing subjects who will go on to act autonomously as part of
 other networks … in a myriad range of ways, in, out, and beyond
institutionalized democracy.135

The large scale of these organizations has required innovative combinations

of horizontal assemblies with other organizing strategies, including
representative practices, so countermeasures to the difficulties of holding
representatives accountable to all will be featured. These organizations
provide specific sites for an entry into international networks and
international platforms by ordinary people to pursue global policy
accountability.
Part III draws on the specific sites for equality in practice in Part II to
examine some concrete outcomes. In Chapter 6, we explore the impacts on
daily life when democracy is no longer focused primarily on elections.
Many societies require in different ways that democracy pervade everyday
life, often as a defense against the passivity when populations give up their
active sense of shaping their own affairs. I explore these impacts in sites
introduced in earlier chapters before turning to gendered daily democratic
practice in the Guatemalan highlands, the International Youth Camps of the
WSF, and the European social center tradition. These social spaces are often
contingent, open, unpredictable, and explicitly designed to oppose
appropriation into the terms of the modern state and into homogenized
social practices useful for claiming liberal democratic consensus.
Multiple sites for equality in practice provide multiple frames for
democratic self-governance and for securing equality understood in
concrete ways well beyond the abstract, universal terms of modern
liberalism. While replying to some major liberal arguments for why
equalizing practices don’t work or can’t last or don’t exist or are only a
utopian dream, the sites for equality surveyed allow us to track where and
how inequality is being overturned. Compromises with representative
practices are summarized, as are countermeasures used to fight off
appropriations into unequal modern social relations and produce equality
with a differance. Performing embodied self-government produces material
and other concrete outcomes comprehensible in modern terms, but I also
discuss modes of equality rarely recognized within the narrow limits of the
liberal state and its affiliated capitalist logics. The Conclusion develops
ways in which multiplicity and difference help us rethink equality, ethics,
the democratic, and the political in terms that differ from those that produce
entrenched modern forms of unequal social relations, instead practicing
democracy with a differance.
In the end, the consideration of democracy beyond the modern electoral
state warns us against those tired and true modes of liberal modern
accountability: writing your representative, running for office, filing a
lawsuit, building INGOs, or raising one’s voice in the public sphere. They
instead offer us options for equality in practice beyond the modern state.
Two appendices may be useful to facilitate working with all of the
different practices together. The first appendix synthesizes various
countermeasures used by the communities in Chapters 2 to 6 to combat
practices that produce and enforce inequalities, narrow interests,
exclusionary practices, and other well-known problems in egalitarian
communities. The other appendix identifies print and internet resources for
becoming better acquainted with the various communities and organizations
discussed, and guides to convening assembly meetings and consensus
practices and to organizations specifically working to strengthen egalitarian
communities and strategies.

A Concluding Supplement

While the term “democracy” literally means something like “the people
who rule,”136 democracy has come to be identified with formal electoral
practices of the representative state. The practices in the chapters to come
demonstrate how we can supplement state forms of democracy, showing
what accountability and self-rule might look like otherwise. Supplementing
the limits to democracy can then work to deconstruct the claim that
democracy as a whole only has to do with the state. Supplementing state
electoral representation in this way disrupts the limits of electoral
democracies, thereby “putting into doubt of a system of oppositions” such
as state/nonstate in order to practice a form of criticism.137
This is not an abstract argument. Rethinking the assumption that the state
owns a monopoly on democracy is particularly important in historical
settings where the state has worked to attack and destroy alternative
procedures and rationalities, Other modes of social relations and power
relations.138 Modern institutions have had to actively construct a field of
operations to carry out its practice through this violent process,139 and it is
important to bring this historical process into view. Through these practices,
European institutions inserted various forms of social relations and power
that were

concerned above all with disabling old forms of life by systematically

breaking down their conditions, and with constructing in their place
new conditions so as to enable—indeed, so as to oblige—new forms of
life to come into being.140

What the following chapters demonstrate is that the non-European and non-
colonial political spaces are very much still active despite this history of
violence, presenting alternatives and autonomous political operations while
also engaging with European ideas, daily practices, and institutions.
By refusing the monopoly claims on democracy of the modern state, we
can respond to the call of the Other who actively practices democracy in
sites, terms, scales, and ways that are Other to the liberal state. By opening
up our assumptions about the “reality” of democracy, we can reshape it in
ways that recognize democracy beyond the state, democracy otherwise to
that which many of us have long called democracy.141
To practice this form of democracy requires for many of us, in the words
of the Thai activist Chayan Vaddhanaphuti, that we “search for and relearn
new modes of knowing which allow other types of knowledge and
experience to be imagined.”142 Likewise, the anthropologist Elizabeth
Povinelli writes about democratic freedom to encourage us to learn how to
recognize “new forms of life”143 that “recast the typical ways we have
written the history of the [European] enlightenment and its core social
institutions and dynamics.”144 These new modes of thinking and living will
introduce us to types of democracy that have been pushed out of public
discussion in many modern societies. As we question practices and
institutions, the democracy that seemed so stable and reliable may come to
be filled with unexpected developments and unpredictable outcomes.
Equality can be unsettling.

Notes
1 I use the term “state” to indicate the modern institutionalized political form known to political
scientists as the modern centralized nation state. I also occasionally use the term “government”
 to refer to the systems and categories of people (elected legislators, administrators, institutions,
etc.) who make up the administrative organization of a nation state and determine its policies, in
a rough equivalence to the colloquial terms “government” or “national governments.” Since the
character and unity of the community are precisely what is at stake in discussions of equality, I
have preferred using the term “state” rather than the term “nation,” since the latter term is often
used in the social sciences to refer to an autonomous community that assumes agreement on
shared interests. These mechanisms for determining agreement are being put into question.
2 Paul Patton, “Deleuze and Democratic Politics,” in Radical Democracy: Politics between
Abundance and Lack, ed. Lars Toender and Lasse Thomassen (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 2005), 53.
3 Giorgio Agamben, “Introduction,” in Giorgio Agamben et al., Democracy in What State, trans.
William McCuaig (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 1–5; Stathis Gourgouris,
“Democracy Is a Tragic Regime,” PMLA 129, no. 4 (2014): 813–14; Raymond Williams,
Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 93–4.
4 James Tully, “The Unfreedom of the Moderns in Comparison to Their Ideals of Constitutional
Democracy,” The Modern Law Review 65.2 (2002): 209–10, 225–6, 227 n63.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1468–2230.00375.
5 Louis Pauly, “Introduction: Democracy and Globalization in Theory and Practice,” in
Democracy beyond the State? The European Dilemma and the Emerging Global Order, ed.
Michael Greven and Louis Pauly (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), 1–2.
6 David Held, Models of Democracy, 3rd ed. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 271–89.
7 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Dialogue on Democracy: Interview with David Plotke.” Socialist
Review 24, no. 3 (1994), 19–21.
8 Saying that this term carries an error, an incorrect name, does not assume that there is a single
“correct” form or name for democracy, as discussed below.
9 Judith Squires, “Equality and Difference,” in The Oxford Handbook of Political Theory, ed. by
Anne Phillips, Bonnie Honig, and John Dryzek (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 470–2.
10 The emphasis on equal participation in the present volume differs from an emphasis on
intergovernmental structures that take citizens beyond the state, as in the European Union and
other intergovernmental organizations like the United Nations and the World Trade
Organization. For a critical analysis of the weakened structures for citizen accountability in
these intergovernmental structures that at times lead to an undemocratic political order, see
Pauly, “Democracy,” 1–5.
11 Steven Muhlberger and Phil Paine, “Democracy’s Place in World History,” Journal of World
History 4, no. 1 (1993): 23–45, www.jstor.org/stable/20078545. Some of the many different
ways to understand councils and assemblies will be discussed in the next chapter. Despite her
focus almost exclusively on mass protests against the state in the Arab Spring and antiausterity
movements since 2010, Judith Butler’s recent theorization of the assembly is useful for its
engagement with modern and postmodern analyses in political and feminist embodiment theory:
Judith Butler, Notes toward a Performative Theory of Assembly (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2015). Other forms of collective agency beyond the mass protest useful to this
project are discussed in James Wong, “Self and Other: The Work of ‘Care’ in Foucault’s ‘Care
of the Self ’,” Philosophy Today, 57 no. 1 (2013): 99–113, and Gayatri Spivak, Death of a
Discipline (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 25–30, 48–52, 102, among other
works discussed below.
12 Sheldon Wolin, Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted
Totalitarianism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 159–83; Jacques Rancière,
Hatred of Democracy, trans. Steve Corcoran (New York: Verso, 2006).
13 One of the weaknesses of much disciplinary social science is the tendency to assume that the
political exists as a sphere separated somehow from economics and other spheres of life, a topic
 to be considered in more depth in Chapter 6.
14 For a useful overview of social science explanations for how equality will never work, see
Francesca Polletta, Freedom Is an Endless Meeting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2002), 2–3 and 232 n1. In disciplinary political theory, many theorists accept social inequality
and only debate equality of opportunity; Ronald Dworkin has even stated categorically that no
one would now seriously propose equality of outcomes as a political ideal, and that equality is
“the endangered species of political ideals.” Squires, “Equality and Difference,” 470–6; Ronald
Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 1–2.
15 Jacques Rancière, Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy, trans. Julie Rose (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota, 1999), 27–32, 116–19.
16 Michel Foucault’s term for this sort of space is “countersite” or “heterotopia,” meaning sites that
somehow “question, neutralize, or reverse” the power relations and inequalities of modern
power/knowledge regimes. They are where what he refers to as subjugated knowledges are still
practiced and trusted. Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” Diacritics 16, no. 1 (Spring, 1986):
24, quoted in Elizabeth Povinelli, Economies of Abandonment: Social Belonging and Endurance
in Late Liberalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 46; Michel Foucault, “Two
Lectures,” in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977, ed. Colin
Gordon (New York, N.Y.: Pantheon Books, 1980), 81–5. Foucault’s emphasis on the always
present instabilities and possible strategic transformation or reversals of force relations is most
clear in his later work: The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, trans. Robert Hurley (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1978), 92–3; “The Ethics of the Concern of the Self as a Practice of Freedom,”
in Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, ed. Paul Rabinow, trans. R. Hurley, P. Aranov and D.
Mcgrawth (New York: The New Press, 1997), 291–3; “The Subject and Power,” Critical Inquiry
8, no. 4 (1982), 793–5, www.jstor.org/stable/1343197.
17 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography,” in The Spivak
Reader, ed. Donna Landry and Gerald Maclean (New York: Routledge, 1996), 214, 226;
Elizabeth Povinelli, “Beyond the Names of the People: Disinterring the Body Politic,” Cultural
Studies 26, no. 2–3 (2012), 377–9, 381–4, doi: 10.1080/09502386.2011.636206; Rodrigo Nunes,
“Nothing Is What Democracy Looks Like: Openness, Horizontality, and the Movement of
Movements,” in Shut Them Down! The G8, Gleneagles 2005 and the Movement of Movements,
ed. D. Harvie, K. Milburn, B. Trott, and D. Watts (Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 2005), 299, 310–17.
18 Foucault, Sexuality, 19; Robert Nichols, “Contract and Usurpation: Enfranchisement and Racial
Governance in Settler-Colonial Contexts,” in Theorizing Native Studies, ed. Audra Simpson and
Andrea Smith (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), 99–102, 109–15.
19 An emphasis on practice is at risk of inviting readers to assume transparency in language and
knowledge, as well as causing readers to assume that individual subjects and communities
preexist as referents of the particular differences at work at each moment. Interrogations of the
assumption of transparency may be found in Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, corrected ed.,
trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1997), 141–
64; Gayatri Spivak, “A Literary Representation of the Subaltern: A Woman’s Text from the
Third World,” in In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics (New York: Methuen, 1987),
241–68; Herman Rapaport, The Theory Mess: Deconstruction in Eclipse (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2001), 65–89, 101–16, 125–7, 135–46; Mark Sanders, Gayatri Chakravorty
Spivak: Live Theory (London: Continuum, 2006), 41–8; and Elizabeth Povinelli, Empire of
Love: Toward a Theory of Intimacy, Genealogy, and Carnality (Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 2006), 2–10. These issues will be further discussed in Chapter 3.
20 Foucault’s emphasis on practice is seen most clearly in Fearless Speech, but also in his life’s
political work (Fearless Speech, ed. Joseph Pearson (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2001)).
Derrida’s focus on the performative aspects of reading and writing outline his approach to
practice, if writing or speech may be considered practices, in addition to his later work on
 friendship, exchange, and hospitality: “Signature, Event, Context,” in Limited, Inc., trans.
Samuel Weber and Jeffrey Mehlman (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1988), 1–
23. Spivak’s work on pedagogy is an important line of argument on practice that runs through
many of her publications. Elizabeth Povinelli’s anthropology of the otherwise seems to draw on
an interest in Indigenous and other survival as forms of practice, as in Economies of
Abandonment. Rodrigo Nunes argues that openness to future developments and to difference
may be facilitated by treating horizontality as a practice, rather than a model or objective law as
some do in Marxian analyses, or as subject to modern divisions (individual vs. collective):
Nunes, “Nothing,” 310–11.
21 Rapaport, Theory Mess, 129–34, 143–4. See also the discussion of freedom below.
22 Jacques Derrida, Glas (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1974) and Jacques Derrida, Specters of
Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International, trans. Peggy
Kamuf (New York: Routledge, 1994), quoted in Rapaport, Theory Mess, 135, 139–40, 142–6;
Peggy Kamuf, “Deconstruction and Feminism,” in Feminist Interpretations of Jacques Derrida,
ed. Nancy Holland (University Park: Pennsylvania University Press, 1997), 103–26; Nunes,
“Nothing,” 310–17. J.K. Gibson-Graham argues that postcapitalist imaginations need “to be
sustained by the work of continually making and remaking a space for it to exist in the face of
what threatens to undermine and destroy it:” J.K. Gibson-Graham, A Post-Capitalist Politics
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), xxvii.
23 Throughout, I use this emphasis on historical specificity as a rough, insufficient colloquial
equivalent to what Levinas, Derrida, Spivak, Deleuze, Cixous, Negri, Nancy, and others call the
singular. Gayatri Spivak, “More on Power/Knowledge,” in Outside in the Teaching Machine
(New York: Routledge, 1993), 28–9, 42–5; Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, trans. Mark
Lester and Charles Stivale (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 52; Antonio Negri,
“Spinoza’s Anti-Modernity,” Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, 18, no. 2 (1995): 1–15;
Kamuf, “Feminism,” 115–17; Stephen Morton, Gayatri Spivak, Key Contemporary Thinkers
(Malden, MA: Polity, 2007), 61–12, 103, 109–10, 129–30, 130–4; David Pettigrew, “The Task
of Justice,” in Jean-Luc Nancy and Plural Thinking: Expositions of World, Ontology, Politics,
and Sense, ed. Peter Gratton and Marie-Eve Morin (Albany: SUNY Press, 2012), 161–4;
Rapaport, Theory Mess, 141–5. This notion of the singular should be distinguished from the use
in some modern political theory of the term “singular” to refer to the distinctive and the
individual. For our purposes, the singular resists both appropriations within a general economy
of objects and reduction to substantialized identities, and also resists reduction to particularities
that may be represented or consolidated generally under Eurocentric universalist renderings of
reason, logic, politics, and social relations. The concrete specificity of the singular occurs
through difference that exceeds the universalizable and does not reproduce the political
appropriations or representations within a rationalist model of exchangeability, as discussed in
the Conclusion: Kamuf, “Feminism,” 177; Rapaport, Theory Mess, 142–4. Most importantly for
the analysis to come, this resistance is both linguistic or conceptual and also found in practice
and history, where it is confronted by force at the limit of liberal tolerance, as Drucilla Cornell
argues, where “in the ideal of a universal, transparent, thoroughly rationalized humanity, the
society of rational wills carries within it a violent attitude toward the nonconformist who can
always be labeled irrational:” Drucilla Cornell, The Philosophy of the Limit (New York:
Routledge, 1992), 49. While an emphasis on the specific has the disadvantage of the persistent
presence of its binary opposite, the general, I adopt this terminology following additional other
arguments for historical specificity as a counter to appropriations under the guise of abstract,
universalized claims, as found in Wendy Brown, States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late
Modernity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 6–7, 11–12; John Markoff, “Where
and When Was Democracy Invented?” Comparative Study of Society and History 41, no. 4
(1991),
 http://pscourses.ucsd.edu/ps200b/Markoff%20Where%20When%20Democracy%20Invented.pd
f, 674 n35; Povinelli, Empire, 19–25; and Nichols, “Contract,” 101–3.
24 Nichols argues, following Foucault, that claims to the universal are themselves a characteristic
of modern disciplinary regimes and governmentality, and cautions against drawing on abstract
ideals (equality, race, social contract, citizenship) in critical analysis, since such ideals reproduce
the very forms of domination that they attempt to undermine. Nichols, “Contract,” 111–17;
Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979, trans.
G. Burchell (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2008), 2–3, 317–18.
25 Jacques Derrida, Rogues: Two Essays on Reason (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005),
29–38, 85–7; Kamuf, “Feminism,” 115–17; Alexander Thomson, Deconstruction and
Democracy: Derrida’s Politics of Friendship (London: Continuum, 2005), 27–8.
26 Derrida, Friendship, 99–100, 158; Thomson, Deconstruction, 19–25.
27 Here I draw on Gayatri Spivak’s critique of Derrida in developing both opposition to the tyranny
of that which appears proper, such as the universal categories of woman or democracy, and how
the proper name or norm is exceeded by the politically situated, singular analysis of the
seemingly improper across “multiple forms of understanding, different forms of change.”
Spivak argues that critique of the conditions of production of value shows how “there are no
fixed rules … not as yet,” producing a site for ethical and political responsibility. Through
reviewing multiple forms of understanding, it becomes possible to recognize how “[t]he
categories by which one understands, the qualities of plus and minus, are revealing themselves
as arbitrary, situational,” and how

when one involves oneself in the microstructural moments of practice that make possible
and undermine every macrostructural theory, one falls, as it were, into the deep waters of a
first person who recognizes the … precarious necessity of the micro-macro opposition, yet
is bound not to give up.
“Feminism and Critical Theory,” in The Spivak Reader, ed. Donna Landry and Gerald Maclean
(New York: Routledge, 1996), 66–7

See Herman Rapaport’s reading of this critique of Derrida by Spivak as arguing for “multiply
(i.e., internationally) situated political frames of reference within which the value of this
indeterminacy is differently produced:” Rapaport, Theory Mess, 65–6. Lydia Liu develops a
comparable analysis of Marx on value (22–4) by deploying Derrida’s critique of the
transcendental signified (3, 20) in her “The Question of Meaning-Value in the Political
Economy of the Sign,” in Tokens of Exchange: The Problem of Translation in Global
Circulations, ed. Lydia Liu (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999).
28 Equality is a surprisingly undertheorized concept central to the European Enlightenment,
modern liberalism, and the democratic nation state as it has spread beyond Europe and its settler
colonies. Perhaps the increasing wealth gaps driven by the neoliberal policies of the past half
century will provide an occasion for some reconsideration. Liberal notions of equality from John
Rawls to Ronald Dworkin, Amartya Sen, and Iris Marion Young have not successfully resolved
the contradictions between formal political equality (before the law, the right to vote) and
continuing material, economic, and social inequalities. Instead, they debate the abstract, general
limits that might be put on individual liberties. See John Rawls, A Theory of Justice
(Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1972); Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue. Or
they may debate general principles under which resources and power might be distributed
equally, an approach that overlooks the same material, economic, and social inequalities. See
Ronald Dworkin, Justice for Hedgehogs (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University
Press, 2011), 356–63; Amartya Sen, Inequality Re-examined (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992);
David Miller, Principles of Social Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 230–
44; Iris Marion Young, Inclusion and Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000);
 Nancy Fraser, “From Redistribution to Recognition,” in Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections
on the “Postsocialist” Condition (New York: Routledge, 1997), 11–39. Though there is some
congruence with specific policies proposed by liberal theorists and the practices discussed in the
present study (Miller, Justice, 239; Young, Inclusion, 141), my own approach draws on critics of
liberalism who interrogate the unequal power relations masked by modern European analytical
categories (nation, citizen, democracy, freedom, culture) and the limits of modern claims to the
“real:” Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan
(New York: Vintage Books), 1995, 16–30, 195–228; Spivak, “Power/ Knowledge”; Derrida,
Specters; Derrida, Rogues, 29–38, 85–7; Rancière, Disagreement, 7–11; Thomson,
Deconstruction, 17–19, 23–9; Peggy Kamuf, “The Ghosts of Critique and Deconstruction,” in
Book of Addresses (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), 219–37; Christopher Peterson,
“The Return of the Body: Judith Butler’s Dialectical Corporealism,” Discourse 28, no. 2–3
(2006): 153–77, doi: 10.1353/ dis.0.0008. Rather than accepting the Enlightenment individualist
assumptions that have subtended modern social and economic inequalities, the discussions to
come of the politics of (mis)naming, difference, the Other, and the supplement in this chapter
and the next present my own approach to equality.
29 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Resistance That Cannot Be Recognized as Such,” in
Conversations with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ed. Swapan Chakravorty, Suzana Milevska,
and Tani E. Barlow (New York: Seagull Books, 2006), 62–74; Adam David Morton, “Peasants
as Subaltern Agents in Latin America: Neoliberalism, Resistance and the Power of the
Powerless,” in Everyday Politics of the World Economy, ed. John M. Hobson and Leonard
Seabrooke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 53–4, 66–8.
30 John Curl, For All the People: Uncovering the Hidden History of Cooperation, Cooperative
Movements, and Communalism in America, 2nd ed. (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2012), 207.
31 While talk about equality is a well-established theme in centuries of discussions of democracy,
little is done to bring practice to account in making equality real. Recent analyses of democracy
that emphasize equality include Danielle Allen, Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration
of Independence in Defence of Equality (New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, a
division of W.W. Norton & Company, 2015) and Jacques Rancière, The Method of Equality,
trans. Julie Rose (New York: Polity, 2016).
32 Squires, “Equality and Difference,” 472. We will discuss this topic further in Chapter 1.
33 Patrick Heller, “Democracy, Participatory Politics, and Development: Some Comparative
Lessons from Brazil, India, and South Africa,” Polity 44, no. 4 (October 2012): 644, doi:
10.2307/41684508.
34 Margaret Canovan, The People (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Ernesto Laclau,
On Populist Reason (New York: Verso, 2005), 3–20, 67–128; Rancière, Disagreement, 99–100.
35 The focus throughout on equality works against the hierarchies installed, calculated, and
enforced by established categories, such as woman/man, undemocratic/democratic, or
particular/universal, where one term is generally given more power, prestige, and preference.
Intervening and displacing the force of these binaries is among the main targets in this project,
even as the binary terms often remain the most readily recognizable way to name unequal
outcomes and impacts. On the persistent presence of inequality in relations that claim to be
equal, see Jacques Derrida, The Politics of Friendship, trans. George Collins (New York: Verso,
2005), 95–101, 274–9, quoted in Thomson, Deconstruction, 13, 17–22. See also Foucault’s
comments on the centrality of inequality in power as the exercise of force relations in Histoire
de la sexualité, vol. 1 La volonté de savoir, vol. 1 (Paris: Gallimard, 1976), 122, quoted in
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Power/Knowledge,” 30–1. Equality may often be caught in a
particular binary, equality/inequality, which is frequently invoked in this book. Throughout the
chapters to come, I explore the misfit between the apparent preference for equality in the
abstract and the persistence in power relations of inequality in practice. This misfit undoes the
 force of the implicit hierarchy that seems to be installed by equality in the form of its binary
opposition.
36 Foucault, Discipline, 170–94, 271–89; Jacques Derrida, “Structure, Sign, and Play in the
Discourse of the Human Sciences,” in Twentieth Century Literary Theory: An Introductory
Anthology, ed. Vassilis Mambropoulos and David Neal Miller (Albany, NY: State University of
New York Press, 1987), 39–47.
37 Sheldon Wolin, The Presence of the Past: Essays in the State and the Constitution (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 151–208.
38 Without attempting to introduce the many controversies over limits to voting, at this early point
I only remind readers that performing the abstract democratic claim to equality through granting
universal access to the ballot box has long been a troubled claim. We will discuss competing
measures for calculating the historical existence of equality in later chapters, but for now this
study may introduce one of many present-day problems with the abstract claim found in an
electoral democracy: Christopher Uggen, Ryan Larsen, and Sarah Shannon, “Six Million Lost
Voters: State-Level Estimates of Felony Disenfranchisement, 2016,” www.sentencing-
project.org/publications/6-million-lost-voters-state-level-estimates-felony-disenfranchisement-
2016/, accessed October 11, 2016.
39 Thomas Keenan, Fables of Responsibility: Aberrations and Predicaments in Ethics and Politics
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 3; Claude Lefort, Democracy and Political Theory,
trans. David Macey (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 29; Derrida,
Friendship, 14–22, 41, 57, 104.
40 Nadia Urbinati, “Oligarchy,” in Mark Bevir, ed., Encyclopedia of Political Theory (Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage, 2010), http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412958660.n319, 986b; Thomson,
Deconstruction, 19.
41 Markoff, “Democracy,” 671.
42 Markoff, “Democracy,” 670; Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1.371, quoted in Markoff,
“Democracy,” 670 n49.
43 Markoff, “Democracy,” 670–1.
44 Urbinati, 956b.
45 Hobson, 1922: 49, quoted in Gerald Gaus, Shane D. Courtland, and David Schmidtz,
“Liberalism,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, accessed July 24, 2015,
http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2015/entries/liberalism/.
46 Carl Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, trans. Ellen Kennedy (Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 1988 (1926)), quoted in Urbinati, 987a.
47 Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy.
48 Foucault, Biopolitics, 129–50, 170–9, 215–33, 296–313; Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos:
Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (Brooklyn: Zone Books, 2015), 17–45; Judith Butler and
Athena Athanasiou, Dispossessions: The Performative in the Political (Cambridge: Polity Press,
2013), 1–37; Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (New York:
Metropolitan Books, 2007).
49 Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005); Mark
Neocleous, “The Problem with Normality: Taking Exception to ‘Permanent Emergency,’ ”
Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 31, no. 2 (2006): 191–213,
www.jstor.org/stable/40645181.
50 Jeffrey Winters, Oligarchy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); David Tabachnick
and Toivu Koivukoski, On Oligarchy: Ancient Lessons for Global Politics (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 2012); Derrida, Friendship, 1–25.
51 Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page, “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest
Groups, and Average Citizens,” Perspectives on Politics 12, no. 3 (September 2014): 564–81,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1537592714001595.
 Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty- First Century (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of
52 Harvard University Press, 2014); Anthony B. Atkinson, Inequality: What Can Be Done?
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015); Klein, Shock.
53 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the
Vanishing Present (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 430.
54 Richard Stahler-Sholk, Harry Vanden, and Glen David Kuecker, “Introduction: Globalizing
Resistance: The New Politics of Social Movements in Latin America,” Latin American
Perspectives 153, no. 34 (2007): 5–16. http://lap.sagepub.com/content/34/2/5.full.pdf.
55 Lydia Liu, “Legislating the Universal: The Circulation of International Law in the Nineteenth
Century,” in Tokens of Exchange: The Problem of Translation in Global Circulations, ed. Lydia
Liu (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999), 127–64; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Ethics
and Politics in Tagore, Coetzee, and Certain Scenes of Teaching,” Diacritics 32, no. 2–4 (Fall–
Winter 2002): 17–31, http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/dia.2005.0001; Thomson, Deconstruction, 22–7.
56 Wolin, Presence, 125.
57 Max Weber, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. and trans. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946), 230.
58 Jacques Derrida, Monolingualism of the Other, trans. Patrick Mensah (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1995), 1–15, 23–4; Thomson, Deconstruction, 69–73. Thomson reads
deconstruction as a form of bearing witness to or vigilance and keeping watch over the violence
in order to intervene strategically to reduce violence: Deconstruction, 41, 73–4, 87–8.
59 Gibson-Graham, Post-Capitalist Politics, xix–xxvii, 2–9; Brown, States, 3–29; Povinelli,
Abandonment, 1–46; Jeremy Moss, “Foucault, Rawls, and Public Reason,” in The Later
Foucault, ed. Jeremy Moss (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998), 153, 156; Kate
Crehan, Gramsci’s Common Sense: Inequality and Its Narratives (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 2016).
60 Benjamin Barber, Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1984); Janet M. Conway, Edges of Global Justice: The World
Social Forum and Its “Others” (New York: Routledge, 2013), 91–4, 144–9.
61 Spivak, Death, 27–32.
62 Foucault, Discipline, 170–94; Michel Foucault, “Society Must Be Defended”: Lectures at the
Collège de France, ed. Mauro Bertani and Alessandro Fontana, trans. David Macey (New York:
Picador, 2003), 65–86; Ann Stoler, Race and Education of Desire: Foucault’s History of
Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), 59;
Andrea Smith, “Native Studies at the Horizon of Death: Theorizing Ethnographic Entrapment
and Settler Self-Reflection,” in Theorizing Native Studies, ed. Audra Simpson and Andrea
Smith (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), 211.
63 Rapaport, Theory Mess, 74–88; Fraser, “Redistribution,” 11–39.
64 Bernard Manin, The Principles of Representative Government (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1997), 8; Brian Wampler, “Participation, Representation, and Social Justice:
Using Participatory Governance to Transform Representative Democracy,” Polity 44, no. 4
(October 2012), 666, http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1118&context=polsci_facpubs.
65 Lynn Stephen, “Gender and Grassroots Organizing: Lessons from Chiapas,” in Women’s
Participation in Mexican Political Life, ed. Victoria Rodríguez (Boulder: Westview Press,
1998), 148; Elizabeth Jelin, “Toward a Culture of Participation and Citizenship: Challenges for
a More Equitable World,” in Cultures of Politics, Politics of Cultures: Re- Visioning Latin
American Social Movements, ed. Sonia Alvarez, Evelina Dagnino, and Arturo Escobar
(Boulder: Westview Press, 1998), 10.
66 Richard Stahler-Sholk, “The Zapatista Social Movement: Innovation and Sustainability,”
Alternatives 35 (2010): 269–90, http://alt.sagepub.com/content/35/3/269.full.pdf+html, 283.
 Frank Cunningham, Theories of Democracy: A Critical Introduction (London; New York:
67 Routledge, 2002), 131; Barber, Strong Democracy, 224; Jane Mansbridge, Beyond Adversary
Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983); Polletta, Freedom, 2–4.
68 Derrida, Rogues, 37–41; Pheng Cheah, “The Untimely Secret of Democracy,” in Derrida and
the Time of the Political, ed. Pheng Cheah and Suzanne Guerlac (Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 2009), 77–8; Thomson, Deconstruction, 12–22.
69 “Collective work, democratic thinking, and subjection to the decisions of the majority are more
than just traditions in indigenous zones. They have been the only means of survival, resistance,
dignity, and defiance.” Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, Our Word Is Our Weapon: Selected
Writings, ed. Juana Ponce de Leon (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2001), 33.
70 Cheah, ‘Untimely,’ 78–9; Derrida, Rogues, 24, 37–9; Rancière, Disagreement, 11–32.
71 Tully, “Unfreedom,” 205–6, 208–9; Emily Hauptmann, “Can Less Be More? Leftist
Deliberative Democrats Critical of Participatory Democracy,” Polity 33 (2001): 413–20, doi:
10.2307/3235441.
72 Thomson, Deconstruction, 41, 57, 72–88.
73 Jeremy Moss develops a Foucauldian analysis of the weaknesses in the liberalism of John Rawls
and other modern political theorists for achieving equality, calling for democratization of the
economic and the social sphere of everyday relations as a countermeasure to the narrow political
limits of liberalism: Moss, “Foucault,” 154–62. For other useful critiques of liberal notions of
political difference and equality that suggest approaches to equality beyond liberal pluralism,
see Squires, “Equality and Difference,” 470–82. My own approach follows Elizabeth Povinelli’s
argument that rather than being an established belief or thing, liberalism is a phantom, a fantasy
that works to constantly change facts on the ground by transforming the world into an image of
its own normalizing horizon: Povinelli, Empire, 13–15.
74 Peggy Kamuf argues that naming is effective only for those whose forces are sufficient to
enforce the myth of their own identity or sovereignty, as in naming a nation or other legal
fictions: “Introduction: Event of Resistance,” in Jacques Derrida, Without Alibi, ed. Peggy
Kamuf (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 11–14. See also Derrida, Rogues, x–xiii,
and Rodrigo Nunes on the naming of particular democratic practices as a form of fetishization
that abstracts norms from practice and restricts the capacity for self-transformation and response
to historical context: “Nothing,” 309.
75 Cheah, “Untimely,” 85–6; Povinelli, Abandonment, 27–8.
76 Spivak, “Ethics,” 17–31; Joe Parker, “Questioning Appropriation: Agency and Complicity in a
Transnational Feminist Politics,” Journal of Feminist Scholarship 3 (Fall 2012),
www.jfsonline.org/issue3/articles/parker/; Rapaport, Theory Mess, 140–5.
77 Examples of these appropriating practices will be discussed in several chapters, including
Chapter 5.
78 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Righting Wrongs – 2002: Accessing Democracy among the
Aboriginals,” in Other Asias (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008), 197–8; Spivak,
“Power/Knowledge,” 48.
79 Luciano Canfora, Democracy in Europe (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 214–52;
Carne Ross, The Leaderless Revolution: How Ordinary People Will Take Power and Change
Politics in the 21st Century (London: Simon and Schuster, 2011), 98.
80 Rancière, Hatred, 71–4.
81 Ross, Leaderless, 90–5.
82 Kaplan, History, 9.
83 Ibid., 10.
84 Foucault, Fearless, 78.
85 Kaplan, History, 9–10.
 86 Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (New York: Norton,
2005). For further discussion of the battle to institute participatory democracy in the United
States, see Chapter 1.
87 Daniel Lazare, “Skeletons in the Closet,” The Nation, January 5, 2004, 31–2. One history
among others of the American Revolution giving attention to inequality as a central social issue
may be found in Gary Nash, The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of
Democracy and the Struggle to Create America (New York: Viking, 2005).
88 For developing this policy, James Madison was attacked as supporting “aristocratic tyranny”
that would “raise the fortunes of the well-born few, and oppress the plebeians.” John Markoff,
Waves of Democracy: Social Movements and Political Change (Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge
Press, 1996), 109.
89 Woody Holton, Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution (New York: Hill and
Wang, 2008), quoted in Lazare, “Skeletons,” 29.
90 Mario Lungo Uclés, “Building an Alternative: The Formation of a Popular Project,” in The New
Politics of Survival, ed. Minor Sinclair (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1995), 173–7;
Leonardo Avritzer, Democracy and the Public Sphere in Latin America (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2002), 137–42, 155–6, 172–64; Robert Gay, Popular Organization and
Democracy in Rio de Janeiro: A Tale of Two Favelas (Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
1994).
91 Jeannette Armstrong, “An Okanagan Worldview of Society,” in Original Instructions:
Indigenous Teachings for a Sustainable Future (Rochester: Bear and Company, 2008), 70–1.
92 Rodolfo Kusch, Indigenous and Popular Thinking in América (Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 2010), 75–8.
93 Ibid., 79.
94 Ibid., 75, 79.
95 Liu, “The Question,” 19–21, 34–5.
96 Spivak develops the notion of “catachresis” to name this practice, exploring the reasons for its
use in “More on Power/Knowledge” through an engagement with Foucault’s nominalism and
Derrida’s refusal of the turn to the general (26–9, 42–5), and further develops Irigaray’s use of
the term in “French Feminism Revisited,” in her Outside in the Teaching Machine (New York:
Routledge, 1993), 164–6. Lydia Liu draws on Derrida’s notion of the trace to link catachresis to
her concept of the “super-sign,” a foreign term that intervenes in a language and hides the split
significance of a term from the “unsuspecting eye of the native speaker” behind the concrete
word: Lydia Liu, The Clash of Empires: The Intervention of China in Modern World Making
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), 13–14, 45–7. See also Liu’s discussion of one
such term, the Chinese minzhu, which is often translated as “democracy” or “republic:”
Empires, 245 n22, 108–39. For a discussion of the “tyranny of the proper,” see Gayatri Spivak,
“Feminism,” 532.
97 Derrida, Friendship, 1–25.
98 John Holloway, Change the World without Taking Power (London: Pluto Press, 2005), 261;
Colectivo Situaciones and MTD Solano, La hipótesis 891: Más allá de los piquetes (Buenos
Aires: Ediciones de Mano en Mano, 2002); Marina Sitrin, Everyday Revolutions: Horizontalism
and Autonomy in Argentina (New York: Zed Books, 2012), 69–82; Miranda Joseph, Against the
Romance of the Community (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002).
99 Derrida, Friendship, 24.
100 Liu, “Question,” 13–41; Nunes, “Nothing,” 303–10; Morton, Spivak, 53–4, 66–8. Spivak has
been particularly successful at focusing her attention on the way in which hegemonic political
terms and movements (including political parties) often work to subsume marginalized social
constituencies into political generalized claims without addressing the demands of certain
 constituencies: Spivak, “Resistance,” 70–4; Spivak, “Responsibility – 1992: Testing Theory in
the Plains,” in Other Asias (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008), 58–61.
101 Some political theorists have made it their work to detract from the emphasis on the general
interest in democratic governance, including the influential writings of Joseph Schumpeter and
F.A. Hayek, both of whom applied liberal economic theory to social and political analysis. The
resulting shift away from general interest and towards competitive individualism and economic
rationalism has had broad effects on global and national economic policy. For a critique of this
shift, see Wendy Brown, Edgework: Critical Essays in Knowledge and Politics (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2005), 37–59, Brown, Undoing, 17–46, 201–22, and Avritzer,
Democracy, 15–20.
102 Jean-Luc Nancy, The Inoperative Community, ed. Peter Connor, trans. Peter Connor, Lisa
Garbus, Michael Holland, and Simona Sawhney (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1991), 25–9; Drucilla Cornell, “The Ethical Affirmation of Human Rights: Gayatri Spivak’s
Intervention,” in Can the Subaltern Speak? Reflections on the History of an Idea, ed. Rosalind
C. Morris (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 100–14; Spivak, “Resistance”;
Rapaport, Theory Mess, 142–6; Guillermo Bonfil Batalla, México Profundo: Reclaiming a
Civilization (Austin: University of Texas Press), 167–9.
103 Useful introductions to these debates may be found in Chris Weedon, Feminism, Theory, and the
Politics of Difference (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 1999); Naeem Inayatullah and David
Blaney, International Relations and the Problem of Difference (New York: Routledge, 2004);
Pheng Cheah and Suzanne Guerlac, “Introduction,” in Derrida and the Time of the Political, ed.
Pheng Cheah and Suzanne Guerlac (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009), 1–37; and
Rapaport, Theory Mess, among others.
104 The supplement in Derrida’s deconstructive practice suggests that meaning derives only from
“substitutive significations which could only come forth in a chain of differential references, the
‘real’ supervening, and being added only while taking on a meaning from a trace and from an
invocation of the supplement, etc.”: Of Grammatology, 159. Gayatri Spivak has called for those
interested in the conditions of subaltern and other oppressed constituents of such political
programs as nationalisms and socialisms to consider this use of the supplement to rethink ethics
and the political: Death, 9.
105 Rapaport, Theory Mess, 134–5.
106 I borrow the notion of difference as antagonism from Slavoj Žižek’s discussion of difference in
terms of class, gender and sexuality, and colonial differences without subscribing to the
universalist Lacanian reading of difference that runs through parts of his analysis, “A Reply to
My Critics,” http://thephilosophicalsalon.com/a-reply-to-my-critics/, accessed August 8, 2016;
my thanks to Herman Rapaport for bringing this post to my attention.
107 Foucault, “Subject and Power,” 778–81, 783–4; Foucault, History of Sexuality, vol. 1, 93–4;
Derrida, “Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas,” in
Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), quoted
in Rapaport, Theory Mess, 125–6, 132–5.
108 This instability provides one site for the complex possibilities of freedom in post-modern
understandings of social relations. Derrida, Grammatology, 157–64; Foucault, “Subject and
Power,” 779–80, 788–90; Foucault, “Ethics,” 282–5, 292–300; Nancy, Inoperative, 25–9; Ewa
Płonowska Ziarek, The Ethics of Dissensus: Postmodernity, Feminism, and the Politics of
Radical Democracy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 33–45, 219–24; James Tully,
“To Think and Act Differently: Foucault’s Four Reciprocal Objections to Habermas’ Theory,” in
Foucault contra Habermas: Recasting the Dialogue between Genealogy and Critical Theory,
ed. Samantha Ashendon and David Owen (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1999), 94–
6; Moss, “Foucault,” 153, 155–6.
109 Jean-François Lyotard, The Differend: Phrases in Dispute, trans. Georges Van Den Abbeele
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), 9–13, 138–41; Kamuf, “Deconstruction
and Feminism,” 117; Cornell, Limit, 40–9. Further discussion of this problem is developed in
Chapter 3.
110 Fuller discussion of the politics of this term will be found in Chapter 3.
111 Ranajit Guha, “On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India,” in Selected
Subaltern Studies, ed. Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1988), 40–1; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “In Response: Looking Backward,
Looking Forward,” in Can the Subaltern Speak? Reflections on the History of an Idea, ed. in
Rosalind Morris (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 227–36. For more recent
reconsiderations of the existence of a separate sphere of the subaltern growing out of analysis of
the impacts of global financial capitalism, see Partha Chatterjee, “Democracy and Subaltern-
Citizens in India,” in Subaltern Citizens and Their Histories, ed. Gyanendra Pandey (London:
Routledge, 2010), 193–208, and Gayatri Spivak, “The New Subaltern: A Silent Interview,” in
Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial, ed. V. Chaturvedi (London: Verso, 2012),
324–40.
112 Guha, “Historiography,” 40–3.
113 Epistemological problems in working with subaltern communities are discussed below and by
Guha, “Historiography,” 41, 44 and Spivak, “Responsibility,” 88, 93.
114 Rosalind Morris, “Populist Politics in Asian Networks: Positions for Rethinking the Question of
Political Subjectivity,” Positions 20, no. 1 (2012), 63 n28, doi: 10.1215/10679847–1471374.
115 Spivak, “Resistance.”
116 Mahasweta Devi, Imaginary Maps: Three Stories by Mahasweta Devi, trans. and introduction
by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (New York: Routledge, 1995), 161–2.
117 Spivak, Death, 52–3.
118 Mark Warren, “What Should We Expect from More Democracy? Radically Democratic
Responses to Politics,” Political Theory 24, no. 2 (May 1996): 241–70, doi:
10.1177/0090591796024002004; Derrida, “Violence,” 104–31; Lyotard, Differend, 116–42.
119 It is for these reasons that Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari turned to the “minoritarian” as a
way of naming a form of democratic practice that refuses the impulse of the majority, an
impulse that quickly becomes authoritarian or even totalitarian: Warren, “Expect,” 247.
Canadian efforts to enforce equality through compulsory enfranchisement of Indigenous
communities show that equal participation through voting in the modern state is not a universal
desire: Nichols, “Contract,” 103–6.
120 See further discussion of competing notions of democracy as a refusal of reconciliation in
Chapter 1.
121 Lyotard’s notion of the differend names that which remains when a system other than one’s own
is reduced to the terms of one’s own system of meaning: Lyotard, Differend, 9; Ziarek,
Dissensus, 92–8, 102–6. For the present argument, I use the colloquial term “Other” to refer to
this excess trace of alterity and difference.
122 Thomson, Deconstruction, 41, 73; Derrida, Rogues, xii–xv.
123 Further discussion of this topic will be found in the next chapter. Advocates for different forms
of democracy are divided on how this happens. For analysis from a deliberative democracy
perspective, see Ian Budge, The New Challenge of Direct Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press,
1996), 7; Fraser, “Redistribution,” 32–5; Cunningham, Theories, 130–1. Critics who find
consensus to be a site for hegemony, coercion, erasure, and violence may be found in Chantal
Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic
Politics (New York: Verso, 1985) and Ziarek, Dissensus, 88–94.
124 Throughout this project I attempt to develop a stronger sense of collective resistance and
agency, rather than resorting to the Enlightenment individual as the primary locus of freedom
 and social change. In doing so, I draw on Foucault’s emphasis on horizontal solidarities and
conjunctions as alternatives to the compartmentalized spaces and alienated individuals of the
modern power/knowledge regime: Foucault, Discipline, 219–20; Moss, “Foucault,” 161–2. I
also draw on Spivak’s arguments for the necessity of collective political action that includes
gender, class, and caste in its definition of the political, as seen not in Communist party politics
or even anti-colonial mass movements but in subaltern and other marginalized cultural
movements: Spivak, Critique, 429–30; Spivak, “Translator’s Preface,” in Devi, Imaginary
Maps, xxv; Morton, Spivak, 53–8, 66–9, 142–4.
125 Here I take as an analogy Gayatri Spivak’s reading of Mahasweta Devi’s notion of
decolonization, where Mahasweta’s fiction suggests to Spivak that the subaltern provides a
space for the displacement of the colonization–decolonization reversal. In Spivak’s view, this
space can become, for Devi, “a dystopic representation of decolonization as such. In this
context, ‘decolonization’ becomes only a convenient and misleading word, used because no
other can be found:” Spivak, “Power/Knowledge,” 49 (italics in original). I use the term
“democracy” in a comparable fashion as a misleading word that works to displace the
democratic–undemocratic reversal, yet one that many readers will recognize, even though it is
profoundly troubled in its historical relations to European colonization, slavery and racism,
gender inequality, and other unequal structures. See discussions of misnaming and the universal
developed later.
126 Spivak, “Power/Knowledge,” 48.
127 On the importance of community including both the moment of decision or closure and the
moment of questioning or opening to its Others or the unknown, see Derrida, “Violence and
Metaphysics,” 79–81, quoted in Rapaport, Theory Mess, 134–6; Spivak, Death, 25–30, 70, 101–
2; Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian
Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 67.
128 Derrida, Friendship, 105; Thomson, Deconstruction, 1, 3–4, 22, 72–88.
129 Santiago Colás, “What’s Wrong with Representation? Testimonio and Democratic Culture,” in
The Real Thing: Testimonial Discourse and Latin America, ed. George Gugelberger (Durham,
NC: Duke University Press, 1996), 161–5; Povinelli, Empire, 5, 14, 156–74; Spivak, Death, 29–
30, 70, 102; Thomson, Deconstruction, 3–4, 22, 41; Rapaport, Theory Mess, 132–46.
130 Kam Shapiro, Sovereign Nations, Carnal States (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), 9–11;
Wolin, Democracy Incorporated, 289; Gilles Deleuze, “What is an Event?,” in The Deleuze
Reader, ed. Constantin V. Boundas (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 42–8;
Foucault, “Ethics,” 291–2, 298–300.
131 Derrida, Friendship, 104, 182, and 232–3, quoted in Thomson, Deconstruction, 22–7 and in
Cheah and Guerlac, “Introduction,” 36 n36.
132 Derrida, Friendship, 1–25; Cheah and Guerlac, “Introduction,” 14–15; Jacques Rancière,
“Should Democracy Come? Ethics and Politics in Derrida,” in Derrida and the Time of the
Political, ed. Pheng Cheah and Suzanne Guerlac (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009),
275–8.
133 The epistemic problems underlying the calculation of these statistics are discussed in Chapter 3.
134 Sanders, Spivak, 92.
135 Conway, Edges, 78–9.
136 Alan Keenan, Democracy in Question: Democratic Openness in a Time of Political Closure
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 1.
137 To avoid being determined by that which is refused (the nonstate, the nondemocratic), my hope
is to recognize “a sort of blind spot in … [the] text, the not-seen that opens and limits visibility”
in order to open up the limits of democratic practice: Derrida, Grammatology, 162–3.
138 Bonfil Batalla, México Profundo, 167–9; Povinelli, Abandonment, 101–62; Nichols, “Contract,”
102, 113.
 David Scott, “Colonial Governmentality,” Social Text 43 (Autumn, 1995): 192–4,
139 http://cscs.res.in/dataarchive/textfiles/textfile.2008-07-22.7869937408/file; Morton, Spivak, 66–
8. Nichols argues that social contract theory and other ideals of the modern, European-derived
state work to legitimize the violence required to turn counterfactual fictions (such as
sovereignty, citizenship, or universal rights) into a reality that the state then enforces:
“Contract,” 102, 113.
140 Scott, “Governmentality,” 193.
141 Cornell, “Ethical Affirmation,” 104.
142 Morris, “Populist Politics,” 64.
143 Povinelli, Empire, 19.
144 Povinelli, Empire, 25.

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1 Democracy Otherwise
Rethinking Democratic Practice

Democracy and its Others

Democracy has come to be widely accepted in the last two centuries, but
only within certain limited terms. Those limits have produced frames for
modern democratic theory and practice that make possible political
inequality in practice, as we have already seen. The limits of modern
liberalism have also been used to justify social and economic inequality in
outcomes, and even policies that not only increase these inequalities but
also perpetrate different violences on citizens and others.1 Many modern
liberals, including influential modern theorists, often justify social and
economic inequality by separating socioeconomic and cultural inequality
from political equality.2 Yet, the widely accepted boundaries between the
political and other areas of life are not as clearly defined as they argue. As
one influential commentator noted, economic and social inequality
“produces serious political inequalities among citizens.”3 Revisiting the
limits to modern democratic theory and practice will make it possible for
democracy to carry stronger ties to equality.
Exploring those practices with which democracy is often contrasted,
what I call the “Others” of democracy, will sharpen our sense of the politics
of particular limits as we reconsider the meaning of democracy. Those with
specific interests in debates over the nature of democracy often attack their
enemies by characterizing them as nondemocratic. These attacks do the
work of narrowing and limiting the specific governance procedures made
acceptable when they are called “democratic” and contrasted with the
“nondemocratic.” In this chapter, I sketch some of the more common
renderings of democracy to bring to light the specific political interests that
they serve.
 Historically, the defining Other for democracy as framed in its dominant
European narrative has been monarchy. This is a central Other in the
predominant tales told of democracy, for it associates the nondemocratic
with the pre-modern. The historical resurgence of interest in democracy in
Europe, which dates to the 1780s,4 centered on the struggle by those
opposed to rule by aristocratic elites and the social hierarchies they stood
for, along with monarchs and church elites. In more recent periods, Others
closely congruent with the monarch are the fascist dictator and the modern
autocrat. In these cases, governing practices are seen as serving the narrow
interests of individuals rather than the common interest.
A related Other of egalitarian democratic practices is rule by wealthy
elites. Rule by these elites was classically associated with aristocracy, and
in our own day is often known by various terms for rule by wealthy elites,
such as oligarchy, oligopoly, kleptocracy or cronyism, or plutocracy. This
Other is important in the present era, when wealth accumulation through
capitalist markets is often celebrated. We will see later in this chapter that
the divisions between democracy and these elitist forms of governance are
not as clear-cut as they may sound.
This Other is central to evaluating whether democracy serves the few or
the many. Yet, wealth inequalities, like gender and other differences, are
found both in modern electoral states and in classical Athens. These
inequalities have been accepted by major European and American political
theorists (Kant, Hegel, Locke, Madison, and Mill) and major Greek
philosophers (Plato and Aristotle).5 These inequalities suggest that
democracy in practice has not been oriented towards reducing or
eliminating inequality, a topic we will discuss further.
Perhaps the most honorable Other of modern European democracy is the
many, the masses, the people themselves, who are often portrayed by
democratically elected and appointed administrators as unreasonable and
wild-eyed, dangerous and antidemocratic, out of control and even violent.
Plato famously condemned democracy in The Republic, portraying the
influence of the uneducated and the poor as a regime of self-undoing
violence, a fatal undoing of the political itself. In the fear of the masses
themselves, Plato thought that democracy must be transformed from rule by
all to rule by the educated, the civilized, the middle classes, and the
wealthy. The people themselves are turned into an Other to democracy, so
that democracy may claim order for those elites who govern. Since
egalitarian democratic politics threatens the wealth and privilege of ruling
elites,6 they often rewrite democracy to mean rule by the reasonable, the
orderly, the civilized, meaning themselves. For both Plato and Aristotle, the
fear of democracy comes from the fear that it will lead to tyranny when the
multitudes come under the sway of a manipulative individual, the
demagogue; they find tyranny to be the endpoint of democracy.7 Here, we
can see the importance of dissent in democracy, of difference rather than
consensus; this will not allow the tyrant to mold the citizenry into the
homogenized whole of consensus but instead “animates the heterogeneity
necessary to withstanding the debilitating stability.”8 Affirming dissent
rather than consensus retains the divisions and antagonisms that make the
tyrant’s work impossible.
The irony of the charge of disorderliness against the people is that
democracy claims to be founded on the will of the people. When portrayed
in this way, the people themselves are transformed from the foundation of
democracy, the demos, to the seething mob that threatens the social order.
As a result, popular democracy has come to hold negative connotations for
those in government office, particularly when emphasized with a term like
“populist” used by elected representatives to distance themselves from
policies popular with large portions of the population, the will of the
majority. So, the characterization of the people themselves as
antidemocratic takes a certain finesse, a calculated slick move that casts the
highly educated and often comparatively wealthy administrators of the
democratic bureaucracy as paragons of democratic reason and virtue over
and against the surging throngs of uneducated and often impoverished
masses. These attacks on the people serve the interests of those already in
positions of power. This highly politicized rendering of the masses of voters
in electoral systems as unreliable boldly wrests the right to determine policy
away from the majority and hands it over to elected officials and experts.
We will return to these debates in Chapter 4.
Another Other for modern electoral democracy is a body that gave a
formal voice to the people: the popular assembly. This formally constituted
body holds considerable power in some democratic systems, but is often
overlooked in modern European state electoral systems as they have spread
globally. These bodies provided a mechanism for constraint on the
representative leaders in the Mediterranean classical period: the assembly
constrained the elected wealthy representatives in classical Greece, for
example, while Roman tribunals could veto proposed senatorial measures.9
Many Indigenous communities also use this platform for community
decision-making, as have many rural communities historically. The irony is
that while ancient empires gave the general populace a formal voice that
might constrain wealthy, formally educated elites, the so-called advanced
political systems give little power to such bodies. By removing one of the
mechanisms that give the general citizenry more control over their own
elected representatives, modern elected representative democracies weaken
the egalitarian workings of democracy. Many of the democratic practices
explored in the rest of the book emphasize the decisions made by large
assemblies at the expense of the few, often dramatically weakening the
power of elected representatives in favor of larger bodies.
Indigenous peoples are often an unspoken Other for democracy, as they
are for the modern state. This is most obvious in settler colonial states, such
as the United States, Argentina, or South Africa, but the pattern is also
found in other colonies and former colonies, as well as in the heart of
European nations or other seemingly homogeneous nations, such as China,
Ethiopia, Thailand, and Japan. Indigenous peoples often come to the body
politic in a different idiom from that of the national democratic social order,
both as different languages and as different cultural, political, and
ontological assumptions.10 Rather than allowing the assumptions, norms,
legislative routines, and idioms of any single group to determine the
workings of democracy, this Other for democracy suggests that the
democratic may be found in the contestation between different protocols of
rule-based social behaviors, different truths, different ontologies. Since sets
of rules and norms inevitably exclude other possible social relations, their
Others remind us of the contestability of social regimens and of democratic
procedures.11 In this sense, attacks on Indigenous Other social practices as
irrational or backward attempt to preserve monopoly norms supporting the
electoral state, rather than allowing a multiplicity of rule or truth regimes.12
Another Other for democracy centers on class inequalities, whereby the
poorest of the poor, a group called the subaltern, are consistently ignored or
erased by middle-class citizens and the wealthy. This Other introduces an
important critical perspective on an era defined by capitalism, such as our
own. This Other does not only open an avenue to considering when workers
must fight for a seat at the decision-making table in their struggle for livable
working conditions and wages; it also asks when those outside capitalism
will be full participants in democracy. Members of this group are
consistently shut out from participation in governance and from the public
sphere, not only as individuals but structurally, meaning that subaltern
resistance is not recognized or heard by modern democracies.13 In the terms
provided and enforced by the modern state, full subaltern participation in
most modern liberal politics might be politely characterized as hopelessly
idealistic. This charge of idealism conveniently excuses democratic citizens
from accountability to all, including the poor, so that democracy may serve
as a mechanism promoting the middle class, workers, and the wealthy. This
presence of the Other of democracy allows for some awareness of what is
outside the historical limits that European-influenced meaning systems
imposes on reason,14 when the impossible (that is, full humanity and
citizenship for the subaltern) becomes possible in practice. We will return to
this Other in Chapter 3.
Unlike the presence of vocal interest groups in the public sphere that
many pluralists assume, a central weakness of democracy is the presence of
interests that are difficult to name under the terms and norms in which the
democracy routinely operates. Exploring concrete practices by the
Indigenous in Chapter 2 and by the subaltern in Chapter 3 will present a
vocabulary to name that which is unnamable in modern European-derived
liberal terms. This also opens the door for strategies to recognize those
whom not all democracies have been able to recognize as citizens. By
beginning to proliferate a vocabulary to name this problem, democratic
practitioners can start to develop mechanisms to reduce the violent effects
of democracies on these groups.
Perhaps the most general name for the Other of democracy is the
antidemocratic. The antidemocratic is often identified with procedures and
practices that overthrow democracy as we know it. Yet, one distinctive
characteristic of democracy is its claim to be always open to modification
through the will of the people. This is seen concretely in the ability of
voters or other participants to add new amendments to constitutions, and to
otherwise change the rules of elections and other democratic procedures. It
is also seen in moments when an entire elected government is overthrown
after it has proven to be dissatisfactory to voters or “the people.”15 While
some associate these practices only with large street or plaza
demonstrations, these rule and government changes may take place in many
ways, as discussed in Chapter 4.
 This openness has its risks. History tells us that democratic deliberations
always hold the possibility of the end of democracy and the turn towards
the antidemocratic, the Other of democracy. We only have to recall the 1932
democratic election of the Nazis to power in Germany and the
democratically elected officials in Algeria who called a halt to the 1992
Algerian elections.16 The openness of the particular democratic assembly in
this sense may become an openness to terminating the practice of openness,
to modifying the procedures and participants in ways that may spell its own
end and the turn towards the antidemocratic.
Yet, the antidemocratic may be part of the democratic in other, more
subtle and discomforting ways. The distinction between democratic and
authoritarian rule is not stable.17 We have already seen in the Introduction
reasons for concern about these moments of exception or states of exception
discussed by Schmitt and others. So, calls for openness to the Others of
democracy in the chapters to come must be treated with caution, with
skepticism, and with a certain vigilance.
Democracy claims social order but certainly deploys arbitrary force and
violence. This force and violence occurs in bodily and other material ways,
in certain key moments such as the founding of a nation, and in the
symbolic and epistemic violence of enforcing limits on possible meanings,
possible assumptions, possible logics, and possible imaginary futures for
democracy. So, a central task of modern democracy is to bring the violence
of the modern state under the rule of law and into accountability to the
people, the democratic sovereigns.
If the coercive possibilities of modern political action are widespread,18
then democracy might be rethought to center on those moments when the
authoritarian, totalitarian, oligarchic, or technocratic turn is refused.
Democracy might then become something Other than the inequality of
modern electoral states. This form is understood as the politics of admitting
that different normative regimens are possible, and that those different
regimens confront each other across gaps “that threaten ‘the social bond’ ”
of a common community.19 By holding open the uncertainty of political
behaviors and routines, democracy may seek “regularized ways of keeping
the space of uncertainty open long enough for it to resolve in new kinds of
social relations.”20 This sense of democracy refuses to close the community
to other possible norms and rules, rejecting any definitive “we” or the will
of a fixed “people.”21 By confronting the democratic use of arbitrary force
and violence, democracy might learn how to keep itself open to Others that
may not seem to belong at first. Opening democracy up to its Others at
times may, perhaps, make equality possible in a world of inequality. Such
openings certainly may disrupt the tyranny of the established reality, the
seeming essence of democracy:22 the inability of electoral democracy to
produce equality in its outcomes. The turn away from modern forms of the
authoritarian and oligarchic presents a possible ethics. Yet, democracy also
requires vigilance and risk.

Democracy in History

Equality may seem like an abstract principle, but the chapters to come are
filled with concrete practices of the principle in history. While many
democratic societies and institutions claim equality, most do so in a very
generalized, abstract way. Many democratic states make claims of unity in
an attempt to produce citizens as a single political body, and these claims to
unity often subsume marginal constituents without addressing their material
needs and demands.23 By making historical failures of egalitarianism visible
and recognizable as problems, we can ask how democracy may produce
“sites and sources of domination.”24 To do so will require careful historical
analysis that remains skeptical of universalizing claims, such as democratic
claims to equality.25 This will help us avoid what might be called idealism:
the use of political ideals to persuade publics without putting the principles
into effect.
Democracy as practiced by most states derives from the time of European
liberalism, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Equality is one of the
most treasured values of that region and that era. Yet, as it became
entangled with struggles between monarchs and parliaments, aristocrats and
peasants, representatives and citizens, equality came to have meaning only
within certain historically specific limits. As the modern state moved in
Europe to unify the people living on its territory and expand its control over
others, it performed many historical actions that were far from egalitarian:
slavery, mercantilism, exclusion of women and immigrants, and attacks on
those who lived in their colonial lands. These actions often required
violence on a grand scale against not only those abroad but those at home,
and installed unequal relations in economic, social, political, and cultural
terms.26
An historical approach to democracy may focus on the possible presence
of the antidemocratic that necessarily accompanies specific democratic
practices in time. For example, the sovereign historical exclusion of Jews or
the lawless or the immoral or minors or the unemployed from democracy in
France violated the liberalism and even the libertine license of
democratization.27 The democratic character of the United Nations General
Assembly encounters again and again the sovereign power of the U.N.
Security Council veto, or the U.N. Charter exception installed in Article 51,
or other mechanisms by which democracy encounters the antidemocratic at
the international level.28 The U.S. restrictions on “certain so-called
democratic freedoms and the exercise of certain rights” were installed in the
post-September 11, 2001 war against the enemies of freedom and
democracy, with the United States thereby “coming to resemble these
enemies, to corrupt itself and threaten itself in order to protect itself against
their threats.”29 In these ways, certain specific political solutions, such as
representative electoral systems, may “actually codify and entrench”
unequal power relations.30
Individual advocates for equality, even well-known ones, struggle with
the same pervasive problem. Alexis De Tocqueville’s praise of the equality
of American democracy, based on a visit to North America in 1831 during
the removal of Chickasaw Indians from their homelands, acceded to this
violent removal of Indigenous peoples.31 The influential nineteenth-century
proponent of democratic equality, J.S. Mill, does not explicitly endorse
deadly violence against Indigenous peoples, but he does note that “nothing
but foreign force would induce a tribe of North American Indians to submit
to the restraints of a … civilized government.”32
Most troubling for claims to equality, historical verification may find that
many democratic states turn out to serve “the few in the name of the
many.”33 When general claims to equality are used to mask unequal
practices or to divert attention from inequality,34 then claims to equality may
work to codify and solidify inequality. We can avoid this form of
democracy as deceit by considering democracy “in existing configurations
of power—economic, social, psychological, political.”35 Through
historicizing specific practices, then, we may no longer have to “ignore the
actual harms that liberal forms of social tolerance and capital forms of life
… produce.”36
Carefully historicizing practices interrupts the appropriation of
democracy under the terms given it by the state, and makes it possible to
consider other conceptions of democracy. Sites for equality in practice that
refuse to submit to the terms determined by the modern state gesture
towards that which is outside the historical limits imposed on reason by
modern language and meaning. They also contest neocolonial and
postcolonial knowledge practices that normalize the modern state.37 Careful
historicized attention to egalitarian practices enables a refusal of the
appropriation through modern logic and reason of these spaces, which
perform disruptions to “normal” liberal political practice.38

Types of Democracy

Democracy as a high-stakes political topic has been subjected to many

competing efforts to influence the general public. Debates are filled with
partisan players attacking their opponents and attempting to claim
democracy as their own. So, many definitions of democracy are generated
in order to produce narrow benefits for partisan players, rather than to
protect the common interest. Many of the most widely used forms of
democracy are structurally designed to produce various forms of inequality,
so, after surveying these familiar forms, I will give a quick overview of
more egalitarian democratic practices.
Representative or parliamentary democracy in modern Europe and its
global heirs relies on elections as the linchpin of equality in practice: voting
rights and other rights are said to be granted equally to all. Yet, electoral
practices have a long, troubled historical association with elitist and
factionalist practices benefitting the wealthy, aristocrats, and members of
other narrow interest groups.39 For example, the elected leaders in one
important source for modern democracy, Athenian Greece, were not seen as
democratic. Instead, the Athenian assembly, an important model for
egalitarian sovereignty,40 competed with the Council of 500 for power.41
This hybrid of a large assembly of citizens with a small, elite group tasked
with policy writing and some decision-making powers is also found in
many other democracies in the modern period. This hybrid form brings
inequality into the heart of the assembly, allowing elites to govern the
passive people. Since the only way in which elected representatives are
beholden to their constituents is through voting, this single pressure point
becomes a central battle ground. Hybrid practices weaken the traction of the
people in their sovereignty over their own affairs.
The combination of assembly-based participation with elite policy
formation has made it possible for democratic theorists to be opposed to
equal rule by all. This includes all the well-known Greco-European
theorists of democracy, from Plato and Aristotle to Kant and de
Tocqueville.42 For example, Aristotle described democracy or the rule of the
many as rule by those without virtue. Rather than democratic rule without
virtue, he preferred rule that subordinated the will of the electorate to the
law under the virtuous leadership of something like the male, slave-owning,
middle-class merchant.43 James Madison, often seen as the “father of the
American Constitution,” promoted a republican form of government, where
the people support the legislature, rather than democracy, where the people
govern through direct participation.44 The opening speech to the 1787 U.S.
constitutional convention by Governor Edmund Randolph of Virginia
argued that “Our chief danger arises from the democratic parts of our [state]
constitutions…. None of the constitutions have provided sufficient checks
against the democracy.”45 These views characterize a period when the term
“democracy” meant something quite distant from modern electoral states:
government exercised through direct participation by the people.
Fear of rule by the people may be why the term “democracy” does not
occur anywhere in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S.
Constitution of the late 1780s, even though democracy becomes a contested
topic in that period.46 To identify modern representative democracy by its
unequal character, some critics have named it “democratic elitism”47 or
“centralized democracy.”48 Centralized mechanisms take power from the
people and give it to elites, to those who are elected. Absent a site where
“the people” can fight for their interests directly, we find that there is a
“middle-and upper-class bias associated with representative democracy.”49
Those who have the widespread habit of taking voting as the single most
important democratic practice risk reinforcing this centralized, unequal
structure.
Voting produces elitism. If voting is the primary or only mode of
ensuring that the elected leaders represent the general interests, then it has
not been sufficient to produce equality in ways beyond the vote.50 Instead,
modern democratic elites function like aristocracies, and are often closely
linked to hereditary wealth handed down in a manner known as oligarchy,
whereby small elites hold state power.51 This failure of accountability may
be the Achilles’ heel for electoral democracies.
Representative democracy is associated with the controversial school of
European political thought known as liberalism or liberal humanism.
Modern liberalism takes as central the protection of certain individual and
corporate liberties, such as free speech and behavior, from interventions by
other individuals or the state. In practice, these freedoms have often been
used to protect businesses from state intervention.52 Some liberals, such as
the nineteenth-century liberal thinker J.S. Mill, supported a combination of
representation with direct participation. Other liberals, such as the
economist Joseph Schumpeter, argued against citizen participation to
promote elite or minimalist democracy. Schumpeter attacked the abilities of
the electorate to shape policy without specialized knowledge, preferring
elected experts and a trained bureaucracy, an approach now adopted by
many nations.53 In the mid-twentieth century, a number of European
countries adopted a form of liberal democracy known as social democracy,
which emphasized social security and social welfare policies that promised
more egalitarian distribution of social resources, while preserving the
representative democratic systems for choosing leaders and policymakers.
While this period was more egalitarian in economic distribution, power
distribution remained centralized and unequal due to the retention of
electoral systems.54 The economist Friedrich Hayek followed Schumpeter’s
views to argue that political parties, rather than direct citizen participation,
should be the primary arena of competition for power.55 Hayek’s neoliberal
approach attacks the regulative powers of the state to open society to the
unrestrained pursuit of profit, allowing unequal market competition and
brutal outcomes for the disadvantaged to pervade all of society.56 In his
approach, democracy is identified with a class of professional leaders, and it
is even possible to have an “excess of democracy,” in the language of the
Trilateral Commission report, when citizens begin to mobilize and demand
what they want.57
Hayek and Schumpeter’s followers, known as neoliberals, have often
used democracy as a cover to install unpopular policies that widen
inequality. For example, Milton Friedman called economic or military
crises “democracy-free zones,” useful to put in place unpopular policies that
would be impossible for elected representatives in democratic countries.58
As Friedman put it in his most influential work, at these moments of crisis
“the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.”59 History shows
that crisis was used in this way not only in military coups in the global
South but also in elected democracies under Margaret Thatcher in the
United Kingdom (after the 1982 Falklands War) and under President Bush
in the United States (after the 9/11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina).60 These
practices attack the power of the many.61 They also widen the wealth gap
between social elites and the general populace both domestically62 and
globally.63 Specific safeguards against this and other forms of rule by the
few will be one of the main focal points in the chapters to come, and will be
summarized in Appendix 1.
In this liberal approach, democracy is reduced to a “procedural”
emphasis on elections, and this weakening of the leverage points for
accountability to the popular will is sometimes described as procedural
democracy.64 The link of the rise of democratic states to the emergence of
the middle class and the support of representative governance for the
wealthy65 has led some to term this troubled complicity “bourgeois
democracy”66 or “capitalist democracy.”67 We will discuss the politics of
such terms shortly.
With the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a U.S.
push for democratizing states deployed Schumpeter’s and Hayek’s
approaches to democracy.68 This campaign involved the combined efforts of
many experts based in academic and policy positions, the U.S. State
Department, nonprofit organizations, academic journals, and private
funders.69 In many of these nations, democracy has been reduced to two
elements: elections, and security enforcement needed by outside investors
and corporations. As a result, basic rights are not available to many, and
national self-determination becomes unenforceable.70 This policy shift made
it possible to promote democracy abroad, along with economic policies,
while limiting decision-making power to transnational political elites.71 By
the dissemination of market values through all social and political sectors,
citizenship is reduced to an unprecedented passive level of participation,72
to the point that liberal democracy and civil rights are being dismantled
both nationally and globally.73 This substitution of an abstract, formal
equality for mechanisms that might otherwise produce social, economic,
and material equality is a persistent problem in the relation of democracy
and equality, one tied to this specific political orientation and historical
period.
Other forms of democracy are thought in mainstream political circles to
have less harmful effects than the neoliberal form. One widely influential
form in the early twenty-first century is what is sometimes called
“deliberative democracy” or “constitutional democracy,” developed by the
influential German philosopher Jürgen Habermas (1996), the Turkish-
American theorist Seyla Benhabib (2002), and the U.S. political
philosopher John Rawls (1993). Deliberative democracy emphasizes the
importance of increased participation in the form of reasoned, critical
debate by all affected parties, primarily through effective communication in
what they term “civil society” or the public sphere.74 Many supporters of
deliberative democracy developed their thinking in the spirit of a critique of
social inequalities.75 Yet, this approach to democracy relies on multiple
organizations to carry out debate in civil society without addressing how
power and participation can be distributed equally across the full range of
differences.76 Some identify civil society with nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) that take up the challenge of democratizing national
or global politics, but these organizations are almost always highly
centralized and unequal in their operations.77 A certain faith that dialogue
and communication in mass media will resolve social inequalities and
conflict remains strong for most adherents, running contrary to decades or
even centuries of historical evidence.78 Recent criticisms of the democratic
weaknesses of the European Union by Habermas and others are part of
what has been termed “cosmopolitan democracy,” which attempts to
conceive of deliberative democracy at the transnational level.79
The difficulty encountered by adherents of deliberative democracy in
determining whether democratic states are controlled by their citizenry or
by small elites suggests a serious weakness for strengthening egalitarian
democratic practice. Critics of this view have pointed out that the notion of
civil society often functions as a mechanism to subjugate those seen as
uncivil, those unwilling to share the European-derived notions and practices
of the modern.80 Perhaps the most troubled characteristic of much of
deliberative democracy is the assumption of a cluster of practices and
traditions associated with the European Enlightenment, such as pluralism,
human rights, respect for the rule of law, and state-centered polities, as the
setting for sociopolitical life.81 Many times, those who are pressured by
these European-derived practices carry out democracy following other
forms of life beyond the narrow limits of the European modern, such as
Indigenous and sexual minorities, or those superexploited, the urban and
rural impoverished, or those at the margins of bourgeois societies. Rather
than subjecting these groups to the terms being forced on them by
Eurocentric thinking and institutions, the discussions to come take their
democratic governance practices from the concrete sites of the assembly,
the council, and other platforms for direct participation in an attempt to
open avenues to Other democratic practices.
In these ways, modern electoral states provide major obstacles to equal
sovereignty for all. There remain limited exceptions, such as the use of
direct democracy in Switzerland and Italy and some of the U.S. states,
where unelected community members are able to propose legislation
directly to the voters.82 Direct democracy is also practiced by a limited
number of national political parties in Finland, Sweden, Ireland, Belgium,
New Zealand, and Argentina, to be discussed later. At the state and local
level, such strong forms of popular sovereignty as referendums and
participatory assemblies are found in a number of large regional states in
several countries, such as Kerala, India and California, United States, as
well as in villages and towns across many locations, primarily in the rural
global South. Each of these alternatives to voting allows the participation of
all community members equally. But these practices will not produce
equality for their citizens when surrounded by inequalities produced
through other political and social institutions.
This brief overview of specific types of democracy must end with a
warning: specific terms suggest a specialized form of democracy, such as
direct democracy or electoral democracy. Yet, these specific terms leave the
general term “democracy” to be appropriated by representative electoral
forms of democracy widely practiced at the state scale. Any attempt to
interrupt this colonization requires attention to the general term as it has
come to dominate the globe, appearing as though it were the universal form
of democracy. Displacing this universal claim is possible through an
examination of democratic practices beyond the modern state, a project to
which we now turn. In these settings, we may come to see democracy as
self-governance whether or not that practice occurs as a state or as an Other
entity, even when it occurs in histories and intellectual lineages well outside
the Greco-European.

A Politics of Naming

One weakness of the discussion up to this point has been the overly strong
emphasis on the modern state. When we look beyond the modern state, we
find many entities that carry out democracy in other terms besides those of
modern European liberalism. We find Indigenous nations that are not
recognized as nations by the European-derived form of the state. We find
social movements and community organizations fighting for equal
sovereignty for all. And with this new, more open approach to democracy
we encounter an entirely new array of practices, terms, and debates.
Participatory democracy denotes widespread participation by citizens in
governing themselves, and is applicable to states or any other settings for
the “engagement of citizens in the determination of the affairs of their
community.”83 Participatory democracy is understood among social
scientists as control by citizens of their own affairs, generally by instructing
governmental bodies to carry out the will of the people, a will that aims for
the common good.84 In participatory democracies, community members
participate not only in the selection between predetermined choices, as in
the electoral systems, but also in the development of policies through
debate and discussion, taking the role reserved for representatives in
electoral democracies.85 It differs from electoral representative democracy
because there is no barrier between participants and the decision-making
process like the intermediary that representatives provide in electoral
systems. Participatory democracy differs from deliberative notions of
democracy in its direct accountability to community participants, rather
than an emphasis on access to deliberative mechanisms such as
communication.86 Historically, this form of democracy has been supported
by social movements that find representative democratic institutions to be
inadequate for effective political expression and accountability,87 but they
still lay claim to democracy for their own practices.
There are many examples of participatory democracy and direct
democracy. Participatory democracy is associated in European political
theory with Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s view of governments, based in part on
his experience in the city states of Swiss cantons. In the Swiss cantons,
sovereignty could not be delegated to representatives but depended on
common decisions worked out together. In the United States, the years
before and following the American Revolution saw the development of
forms of direct rule, including the first state constitution to use the term
“democracy” established in the state of Rhode Island in 1641,88 or the town
meetings of the pre- and postrevolutionary period.89 Proponents of
participatory democracy were a major force in the French Revolution,
fighting a losing battle against proponents of electoral representative
systems,90 much as Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson lost the struggle
for this form of democracy in the U.S. revolution. For Rousseau and more
recent advocates, participatory democracy sees government as primarily
administrative, strictly mandated to carry out the will of the leaders.91
Leaders in Rousseau’s view were best selected not by vote but by such
random methods as lot or systematic rotation, so that democracy relies not
only on formal government but also on the democratization of all political
systems.92
Participatory democracy challenges democrats to go beyond electoral
practices to incorporate additional mechanisms for holding governments
and political leaders accountable.93 Rather than seeing elections as the
quintessential mechanism for citizens’ control of their own affairs,
participatory democratic practices proliferate the sites and procedures for
ensuring democratic accountability.94 As we will see later, participatory
democracies are found in a very wide range of locales and a surprising
multiplicity of forms, and despite skeptics from representative democratic
locales, they have proven to be durable and vigorous in nature.
Since community members are directly involved in developing policies, a
well-informed and highly active public is required, and these forms are
sometimes called “direct democracies.”95 Participation requires full citizen
involvement at all stages in democratic decision-making,96 so that all
citizens must be trained in the knowledge, skills, and expectations needed to
take charge of their own affairs rather than acquiescing to others who may
have different interests.97 Citizens in states where voting is the primary type
of participation in democracy may find this high level of involvement hard
to imagine or consider seriously, but this is because direct participatory
democracy is not a mode of governance with which they are familiar.98
Typically, direct participation, beginning in small and local arenas, is
required to break the passivity, possessive-individualist values, economic
inequalities, and continuing subordination fostered by electoral and “realist”
forms of democracy.99 How this need for training and socializing
community members for such a high level of participation is satisfied will
be another question that we will ask of those communities that practice
egalitarian governance in the following chapters.
As sites for political involvement increase beyond the ballot box, the
centralization of existing circuits of power is reduced. Decentralizing power
opens the door to questioning the boundary between the few and the many,
the elites and the people, interrupting modern unequal hierarchies and
administrative regimes.100 This opens up the democratic process to
nonprofessionals, people who are not specialists or experts in politics but
who get involved as part of their everyday lives. Reduced centralization at
times also comes to mean reduced inequalities, as more people attain access
to political power and the ability to shape their own lives.
Some believe that decentralized mechanisms can operate alongside and
interacting with representative mechanisms,101 and state-sanctioned forums
for citizen participation have been developed actively in the global South.102
Examples of forums for participatory governance that have been put into
practice include participatory budgeting and planning (discussed in the
Introduction), neighborhood councils, regional or national citizen councils
and oversight boards, and policy councils and conferences.103 Others have
found that decentralized participatory practices conflict with the social
hierarchies produced by representative systems.104 At stake in these debates
is the character of democracy.
Other terms for participatory democracy emphasize particular aspects of
democratic decision-making. Popular democracy emphasizes mechanisms
by which popular social sectors can “subordinate and utilize the state in
pursuit of their interests, with mobilization in civil society as the principal
form in which political power is exercised.”105 Anarchist democracy
emphasizes the lack of mediating and centralized state agencies and
officials.106 Associative democracy turns towards voluntary associations to
carry out many of the functions of the state, giving association members a
high level of participation and reducing the hierarchical character of some
government functions.107 Each of these terms highlights particular aspects of
participatory practice, and each has advantages and disadvantages.
 In addition to the formal names we just reviewed, many practitioners of
egalitarian democracy use terms for their practices that invite debate and
participation. These names often question possible limits and loopholes, and
draw on extensive experience with the problems of misnaming we have
already introduced. They generally reject the commonplace assumptions of
modern, European-modeled representative democracies, and draw on
multiple political, social, cultural, and linguistic heritages well beyond the
limits of the northern Mediterranean that are so closely identified with the
European-derived modern. As we introduce this wide range of terms and
names, the politics of naming will become apparent and open room for
more strategic political practices in the chapters to come.
One set of terms for democratic practice comes from traditions that have
not had good relations with European-modeled states, such as the term
“councils” associated with some Indigenous or tribal forms of governance.
Indigenous forms of participatory governance are grounded in practices that
had little or no historical dependence on European political theory until they
experienced European contact. For some Indigenous participants,
participatory democracy means autonomy from the colonizer’s governance
system and constitutes what might be termed decolonization. Many
Indigenous and subaltern groups have never experienced European-style
democracy as anything other than a mode of colonial violence. For these
colonized groups, claiming local self-determination is a moment of dignity
and recognition as human that rejects and displaces the dehumanizing
practices of the colonial and postcolonial state.108 By recognizing oneself as
sovereign over one’s own affairs individually and as a community,
participatory governance in this history becomes the reclaiming of one’s
political power rather than the delegating of politics to others.
Many local communities beyond the Indigenous have long practiced
various forms of assembly-based decision-making, such as the rural village
square or town hall meeting.109 Social movements also use assemblies for
decision-making across a wide range of locales and cultural contexts.110
Many of these groups have contested relations with the modern liberal state,
and these local practices often have complex and at times ambivalent
relations to representative democracy. We will see that the popular
assembly is among the most important institutional structures for
democratic equality.
 Another set of terms for egalitarian self-determination was used in social
movements after World War II, and emerged from debates on the left
regarding egalitarian social formations. Leftists who opposed decision-
making dominated by political parties and socialist bureaucrats in the 1970s
developed the term “prefigurative” to indicate their interest in practicing
what they wanted to see in the future for their communities: decentralized
egalitarian power relations.111 This term has come to be used to describe
traditional Indigenous egalitarian governance forms, land occupation
movements in rural Brazil, squatter movements in urban abandoned
buildings, and many other sites. Other related terms found in social
movements include the “beloved community” associated with the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the United States.112
A similar term, “horizontalism,” was widely used in Argentinian
organizing in the wake of the December, 2001 national economic crisis.113 It
has come to be used internationally in the Global Justice Movement, linking
forms of organizational behavior to criticisms of the capitalist economics of
globalization. The term itself suggests to participants in these movements
much more than nonhierarchical relationships: it implies the use of direct
democracy and “a process where everyone participates and is heard and
new collective relationships are created.”114 None of the participants
discussed below claim that horizontality and autonomy are easy, since they
are part of the constant struggle against inequality and vertical power
relations, a topic to be addressed in Chapter 6.115 The new relationships that
emerge from these practices have proven quite significant for many
participants, constituting what is variously called “love,”116 “the event,”117 or
even “the political.”118 While these platforms for participation do not avoid
inequality completely,119 they do provide a means by which communities
can broaden participation significantly rather than use centralized decision-
making. The events in Argentina from this era will be discussed in Chapter
4.
Through the twentieth century, organized labor has taken the notion of
councils to designate a specific form of workplace management that claims
to produce equal voice for each worker in a specific workplace, the so-
called “workers’ councils.” This social form has been revitalized in the past
twenty years of turmoil deriving from neoliberal policies, particularly in
Argentina and other countries in Central and South America and in Europe.
Anarchist communities and movements often deployed nonhierarchical
decision-making and other political practices both in formal occasions such
as meetings and gatherings and also more informally in daily life.120 The
last few decades have also seen increasing discussion of a form of social
movement building known as “open Marxism,” which is closely associated
with council forms of organizing and a rejection of vanguard-centered
structures, combined with nondeterminist historical analysis drawing on
anarchist methods, situationism, and autonomy.121
Autonomy has been a central objective for political movements and
Indigenous communities since long before the European Enlightenment
thinkers began to celebrate individual freedoms.122 Workers sometimes
named the practice of worker-run workplaces “autonomy,”123 which they
also knew as “autogestion,” a cognate term describing self-management,
mutualism, and anarcho-syndicalism.124 In recent theory, the Greek-French
social critic Cornelius Castoriadis developed the term “autonomy” in the
early post-World War II years to describe communities that actively became
involved in creating their own institutions and laws, often through direct
democratic means that displaced elected leaders to the role of enforcement
rather than legislation.125 This term has come to be widely used at the turn
of the twenty-first century to suggest self-organizing behaviors and direct
democratic participation in recent decentralized organizing for global
justice and elsewhere.126
A type of democratic practice and theory known as radical democracy
advocates practice that allows disagreement rather than a search for
consensus, a type of pluralism that blocks the impulse towards total
agreement of a unified social sphere seen in totalitarianism. Rejecting
liberal political theory and suspicious of rights talk as masking particular
interests, Chantal Mouffe, Ernesto Laclau, and Claude Lefort argue for
supplementing equality with freedom and for the mutual transformation of
incompatible positions through social struggle.127 These theorists emphasize
Lefort’s notion of democracy as a space where markers of certainty, such as
fixed identities and party allegiances, are dissolved. As a result, radical
democratic theory directs political practice towards both critique of
undemocratic centers of power and also the importance of imagination in
putting multiple, interacting practices to work, an emphasis shared with
Jean-Luc Nancy and some other postmodernist theorists.128
Activists and theorists influenced by the political theorists Gilles Deleuze
and Felix Guattari have also developed a vocabulary to name nonstratified
egalitarian organizations, including the use of the biological term “rhizome”
and the more technical term “meshwork.”129 This language has been
borrowed widely, and is shaping a broad range of both analytical writing
and movement practice, from the decolonizing work of Walter Mignolo and
many involved in Central and South American social movements to the
influential theorists John Holloway, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, and
activists working transnationally. The term “networked politics” is also
coming into use for transnational social movements to refer to social
relations rendered more egalitarian by the internet and social media.130 We
will find that multiple forms and institutional structures are emerging for
transnational work towards democratic accountability; these efforts will be
discussed in Chapter 5.
The identification of democracy with deconstruction by Jacques Derrida
disrupts the assumption that democracy is a programmed politics, and has
provoked attempts to implement another politics, another democracy.131 By
interrupting democracy as a particular state practice or some naturalized
legal principle or theoretical rule, deconstructive democratic practice
intervenes in the violences of the established political limits to democracy.
Democracy takes the form, for Derrida, of a critique of the empirical
failures to establish equality and a negotiation within a particular
intellectual heritage and political history to remove those limits through
responsibility to their Others.132 Rather than allowing naturalized bonds
(nation, brotherhood, community) to determine democratic practice, in this
approach democracy allows itself to be determined by an ethics responding
to difference, to electoral liberal democracy’s Others.133 In responding to
difference, democracy becomes a formal principle of equality, centering
around a vigilance that keeps watch over violences unavoidably installed by
the limits, inequalities, and exclusions to community.134 Persistent
questioning about these violences opens up a possible deepening of its
responsibility to its Others, rendering democracy both ethical and
unrecognizable in established terms through the practice of Other forms of
struggle and constant negotiation to reduce inequalities and violences.135
Finally, there are approaches to egalitarian democratic practices that
pervade everyday life, renegotiating the boundary between the political and
other social spheres. One such type is what is sometimes known as deep
democracy, a practice explicitly focused on the everyday as opposed to
representational democracy.136 Some forms of deep democracy work to
produce networks of horizontalist social spaces that transform subjectivities
both individually and collectively through everyday, localized, concrete
democratic practices.137 These egalitarian spaces are contingent, open,
unpredictable, and designed to oppose incorporation, appropriation, and
homogenization as a normative standard for a consensus society-wide,
majoritarian project.138 The emphasis on inventive, reimagined spaces of
difference and alterity in this conception of horizontal social spaces invites
a focus on social transformation rather than electoral party politics,
rejecting preestablished national or identitarian categories or practices
centering on the public sphere.139 These practices, which often lead to an
invigorated popular sector, will be the main topic of Chapter 6.
How to proceed under the cloud of all these competing terms
accompanied by their often contentious political debates? The term
“horizontalist” perhaps most definitively names the egalitarian impulse, so I
will use that term in this book, not out of affiliation with a particular
movement or theoretical school but simply because it makes its egalitarian
politics explicit. The term “participatory” also makes clear a commitment to
equal participation shared by all who are subject to democratic decisions or
sovereignty, so I will continue to use this term as well. Both suggest an
implicit critical perspective on the electoral representative democratic
mechanisms that are so commonly found both at the national level and in
many other settings.

In Place of a Definition

Setting questions of equality at the center of democracy changes its politics.

Rather than granting powerful nations and partisan elected leaders
unlimited access to the very persuasive category of democracy, asking
democracies about equality brings to light the failures of modern
democracies to produce what they promise. If the ballot box fails to produce
equality, then other practices might produce other modes of accountability
to all. Rather than working primarily to stabilize society and reinforce the
existing social order, democracy can become a way to produce equality, to
make equality real. The ability of democracy to change when its citizens
determine how and why it should change is perhaps its most valuable
characteristic for realizing equality. At any time and in any place that
democracy is alive, the people can shape it as they see fit.
Since inequality is often distributed unevenly across categories of
difference in society, practicing democracy in ways that produce equality
requires attention to difference. How might we talk about democracy and
equality without overlooking difference? In approaching democracy
through difference, rather than through some claim to a universal “essence,”
it is useful to find a way to talk about democracy that does not reduce all
democracy to a single sameness. Exploring briefly the terms widely used to
make democracy seem independent from its Others will open ways for
difference to remain active in the chapters to come.140
Among democracy’s Others in current usage are those forms of
government that openly grant power to a small group. Yet, the boundary
line between democracy and its Others is not as stable as might be
expected. If we wish to continue to honor the ancestors of the European
electoral state, we can ask Plato about Athenian democracy: “a form of
government which receives various names, according to the fancies of men,
and is sometimes called democracy, but is really an aristocracy or
government of the best which has the approval of many.”141 While
aristocracy is no longer a viable political practice, it is clear that Plato
means not blood lineages but an aristocracy defined as “government of the
best.” This justification for inequality has also been promoted by modern
liberal enthusiasts for the rule of experts, such as Schumpeter and Hayek,
discussed above. As noted earlier in this chapter, rule by experts often
renders regular citizens passive, and often leads to the rule of the wealthy.
Many critics of the last decades of democracy find that in its liberal or
neoliberal form, democracy comes to closely resemble plutocracy or rule by
the wealthy. Attention to these differences allows us to notice how they
shape the meaning of democracy, and when their differences may come
undone.
The suggestion in Plato’s comment that the best must receive the
approval of the many makes counting and calculation central to determining
whether government is democratic or aristocratic, just as it is with modern
elections. Perhaps one of the reasons for the popularity of electoral states is
that they make counting easy, since ballots are easier to count than blue
blood levels or wealth or other factors. If the borderline between democracy
and aristocracy (or oligarchy or plutarchy) and between rule by “the few” or
“the many” is so unstable yet crucial, then vigilance about this border
becomes important. The modern emphasis on calculation and numeracy
also suggests another Other for democracy: the incalculable as a mode of
governing and ascertaining the limits of “the people,” a topic discussed in
the chapters to come.
Another trace of the unstable line between democracy and its Others is
found in Aristotle, an opponent of democratic governance. To him,
democracy threatened to allow anybody, even the uneducated, the
uncivilized, the unlettered, and the unethical, into a position of power, and
so it must be opposed and replaced with oligarchy: “It is accepted as
democratic when public offices are allocated by lot, and as oligarchic when
they are filled by election.”142 In this view, at one theoretical root of the
narrow modern practice of democracy in the electoral state, we find that
electoral representatives raise the problem of oligarchy. Yet, little discussion
may be found of this problem and its implications for equality.143
The rule by exception discussed in the Introduction raises the specter of
the autocrat, the ruler who operates above the law and conjures social
spaces where the rule of law does not apply. So, autocracy is another
important Other for democracy. Controversial examples of the instability of
this difference are seen in the exceptions to democratic norms declared by
executive fiat, whether in electoral states under the capitalist modernity of
1930s Germany or under the Bush administration in 2001 in the United
States.144 In both these cases, the powers wielded by elected leaders appear
little different from the freedom of the autocrat to ignore or disable the rule
of domestic law or international law. Moreover, in the case of the United
States, this exercise of rule by exception was confirmed by reelection
despite patent violations of the rule of law, one of the most important
guarantees of equality in an electoral democracy. Marking in this way when
difference indicates distance and when difference may indicate resemblance
helps participants in democracies recognize that difference is not fixed, but
unstable.
Finally, the term “democracy” works to yoke together the people (Gk.
demos) with governing their own affairs (Gk. kratos), yet fissures between
these two terms open when a small elite group rules, rather than the people
as a whole. One way to understand democracy through difference is to ask
whether democracy in practice strengthens the ability of the people to rule
their own affairs or distances the people from governing their lives. This
allows us to see democracy not as a confirmed fact or an assumed reality
produced by elections, but as a question, as an interrogation, and as a
practice: a constant process of producing the real of democracy and of
equality through governance by the people. Such questioning allows the
people to confirm where practices have produced democracy or its Others:
aristocracy, oligarchy, plutocracy, autocracy, and other Others.
Asking about equality and difference in this way can produce a
democracy that is constantly haunted by these antidemocratic Others as
being alive and well in democratic practices, rather than allowing
democracy to expunge them from memory, from imagination, from theory,
and from practice. Then, democratic practice will come to an ethics not
through some universalist ethical program but through the encounter with
those Others with whom we began this chapter: the aristocrats and
monarchs and despots and autocrats; the poor and subaltern as other to
government by the middle-class and the wealthy; the popular assembly; the
Indigenous as other to the nation; the masses of the people themselves as
Other to government by selected elites; and the plutocrats and kleptocrats
and oligarchs.
We may end with the recognition that democracy does not yet exist.
When we understand democracy as troubled and in crisis, it might best be
understood as the dream of democracy, the dream “that humans might
govern themselves by governing together.”145 Dreaming democracy may be
democracy generating a critique of the unequal social order around us,
where all too few of us govern ourselves and all too few of us govern
together. Dreaming means we must use our imaginations to envision a
world that does not yet exist, and think critically about the undemocratic
and unequal character of the world around us.
Multiple conceptions of democracy prevent any single definition from
monopolizing our thinking and give us room to bring each to crisis through
critical questioning. Questions about equality bring democratic inequality
out into the open. Openly asking about equality makes it possible to
transform democratic practices to produce more equality. Indeed, such
openness to changing practices and procedures is one central mechanism of
accountability to the people, and a primary characteristic of democratic
governance.146 They also challenge us to put our dreams to work, to put
democracy into practice for the future. Criticism has become almost a lost
art under electoral democracy and the barriers it often produces between the
few and the many, those who govern and those who are governed. In this
sense, democracy asks us to imagine the world we want, and then make it
real.
Rather than closing with a conclusion, I invite readers to examine the
questions in Appendix 1 on countermeasures useful for equality in practice.
Ask yourselves whether these questions allow you to critically consider
your own democratic practices, however Other to modern electoral
democracy they may be, to bring them to crisis. Through this crisis, the
Appendix questions about equality may provoke an Other vision of
democracy, an imaginative act, a dream of democracy as equality rather
than democracy as inequality. If they do, then your democratic practice may
still have room for critique, whereby your present democratic practices may
displace the practices you know already for a future democracy.

Notes
1 Brian Turner, Equality (London: Tavistock, 1986), 27; Judith Squires, “Equality and
Difference,” in The Oxford Handbook of Political Theory, ed. Anne Phillips, Bonnie Honig, and
John Dryzek (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 470–2; Louis Pauly, “Introduction:
Democracy and Globalization in Theory and Practice,” in Democracy beyond the State? The
European Dilemma and the Emerging Global Order, ed. Michael Greven and Louis Pauly (New
York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2000), 1–3; Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine:
The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007), 131–41, 283–307,
325–40, 406–22.
2 John Rawls, “Justice as Fairness: Political Not Metaphysical,” Philosophy and Public Affairs
14, no. 3 (1985): 223–51; T.H. Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1950); Christine Helliwell and Barry Hindess, “Political Theory and Social
Theory,” in The Oxford Handbook of Political Theory, ed. Anne Phillips, Bonnie Honig, and
John Dryzek (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 820. Arguments in liberal political
theory for the continued importance of equality of social and economic outcomes may be found
in David Miller, Principles of Social Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 5–6,
230–44; Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality (New York:
Basic Books, 1983); and Anne Phillips, “Defending Equality of Outcome,” Journal of Political
Philosophy 12, no. 1 (2004): 1–19.
3 Robert Dahl, On Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 178; Pauly,
“Introduction,” 1–3.
4 John Markoff, “Where and When Was Democracy Invented?” Comparative Study of Society and
History 41, no. 4 (1991): 663–6, http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0010417599003096.
5 Frank Cunningham, Theories of Democracy: A Critical Introduction (London; New York:
Routledge, 2002), 13, 25–32, 68; James Tully, “The Unfreedom of the Moderns in Comparison
to Their Ideals of Constitutional Democracy,” The Modern Law Review 65, no. 2 (2002): 204–
28, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1468-2230.00375; David Graeber, The Democracy Project: A
History, a Crisis, a Movement (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2013), 154–78.
 6 Stathis Gourgouris, “Democracy Is a Tragic Regime,” PMLA 129, no. 4 (2014): 814a–b, doi:
10.1632/pmla.2014.129.4.809.
7 Ibid., 815b.
8 Ibid., 816a–b.
9 Melissa Lane, The Birth of Politics: Eight Greek and Roman Political Ideas and Why They
Matter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014).
10 Adam David Morton, “Peasants as Subaltern Agents in Latin America: Neoliberalism,
Resistance and the Power of the Powerless,” in Everyday Politics of the World Economy, ed.
John M. Hobson and Leonard Seabrooke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 118–
20; Ewa Płonowska Ziarek, Ethics of Dissensus: Postmodernity, Feminism, and the Politics of
Radical Democracy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 6, 9, 227 n18.
11 Jean-François Lyotard, The Differend: Phrases in Dispute, trans. Georges Van Den Abbeele
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), 150, quoted in Mark Warren, “What
Should We Expect from More Democracy? Radically Democratic Responses to Politics,”
Political Theory 24, no. 2 (May 1996): 245–6, doi: 10.1177/ 0090591796024002004.
12 Lyotard, Differend, ix, xiii, 139–41; Warren, “Expect,” 245.
13 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Scattered Speculations on the Subaltern and the Popular,”
Postcolonial Studies 8, no. 4 (2005): 475–86,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13688790500375132432; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Subaltern
Talk: Interview with the Editors,” in The Spivak Reader, ed. Donna Landry and Gerald Maclean
(New York: Routledge, 1996), 287–308; Alberto Moreiras, The Exhaustion of Difference: The
Politics of Latin American Cultural Studies (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 286–
8; María Josefina Saldaña-Portillo, “No Country for Old Mexicans: The Collision of Empires on
the Texas Frontier,” Interventions 13, no. 1 (2011): 154.
14 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Ethics and Politics in Tagore, Coetzee, and Certain Scenes of
Teaching,” Diacritics 32, no. 2–4 (Fall–Winter 2002): 17–21, 23–6,
www.englweb.umd.edu/englfac/KChuh/SpivakEthics.pdf.
15 Tully, “Unfree,” 205–6; Derrida, Rogues, 38–41.
16 Jacques Derrida, Rogues: Two Essays on Reason (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005),
24, 30–4; Pheng Cheah and Suzanne Guerlac, “Introduction,” in Derrida and the Time of the
Political, ed. Pheng Cheah and Suzanne Guerlac (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009),
78.
17 R.B.J. Walker, “Conclusions: Sovereignties, Exceptions, Worlds,” in Sovereign Lives: Power in
Global Politics, edited by Jenny Edkins, Veronique Pin-Fat, and Michael Shapiro (New York:
Routledge), 247; Sheldon Wolin, Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the
Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 15–68;
Thomson, Deconstruction, 22–9, 46–9.
18 Derrida, Rogues, xi.
19 Lyotard, Differend, 150, quoted in Warren, “Expect,” 247.
20 Warren, “Expect,” 247.
21 Ibid., 248.
22 Drucilla Cornell makes this point in her critique of universalism and essentialism, which she
develops in considering feminine difference: Drucilla Cornell, Beyond Accommodation: Ethical
Feminism, Deconstruction, and the Law, rev. ed. (New York: Rowman and Littlefield
Publishers, Inc., 1999), 2.
23 Morton, Peasants, 53–4, 66–8.
24 Wendy Brown, States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1995), 6–7.
25 Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (Brooklyn: Zone
Books, 2015), 79–111; Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Graham
 Burchell (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 170–94; Graeber, Democracy, 150–207;
Elizabeth Povinelli, Empire of Love: Toward a Theory of Intimacy, Genealogy, and Carnality
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 175–236; Charles Spinosa, Fernando Flores, and
Hubert Dreyfus, Disclosing New Worlds: Entrepreneurship, Democratic Action, and the
Cultivation of Solidarity (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997), 1–33; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, A
Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1999), 198–311.
26 William Connolly, “The Liberal Image of the Nation,” in Political Theory and the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples, ed. Duncan Ivison, Paul Patton, and Will Sanders (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2000), 186–90.
27 Derrida, Rogues, 19–21, 35–9.
28 Ibid., 97–100.
29 Ibid., 39–40.
30 Brown, States of Injury, 11–12; Tully, “Unfree;” Wolin, Democracy, 276.
31 William Connolly, “Liberal Image,” 186.
32 John Stuart Mill, “Considerations on Representative Government,” in John Stuart Mill on
Liberty and Other Essays (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), 6, quoted in Connolly,
“Liberal Image,” 186–7.
33 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “More on Power/Knowledge,” in Outside in the Teaching Machine
(New York: Routledge, 1993), 42–9.
34 Brown, States of Injury, 6, 12.
35 Ibid., 6.
36 Povinelli, Empire, 25.
37 Spivak, “Ethics,” 17–21, 23–6; María Josefina Saldaña-Portillo, The Revolutionary Imagination
in the Americas and the Age of Development (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 153–
5.
38 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “French Feminism Revisited,” in Outside in the Teaching Machine
(New York: Routledge, 1993), 163–71; Spivak, “Ethics,” 22; Markoff, “Democracy Invented,”
674 n65; Moreiras, Exhaustion, 286–88.
39 Markoff, “Democracy Invented,” 672.
40 For an argument that the Athenian assembly followed the example of other assembly-based
governance practices in what is now known as Mesopotamia and India, see John Keane, The
Life and Death of Democracy (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2009), 78–155.
41 Temma Kaplan, Democracy: A World History, New Oxford World History (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2015), 7–11; Donald Kagan, Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy
(New York: Free Press, 1991), 15; Gourgouris, “Tragic.”
42 Graeber, Democracy, 150–92; Gourgouris, “Tragic;” Michel Foucault, Fearless Speech, ed.
Joseph Pearson (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2001), 78.
43 Cunningham, Theories, 7–8; Gourgouris, “Tragic,” 814–15.
44 Wolin, Democracy, 151–2, 278–83; Cunningham, Theories, 25.
45 Graeber, Democracy, 168.
46 Robert Palmer, “Notes on the Use of the Word ‘Democracy,’ 1789–1799,” Political Science
Quarterly 68 (1953): 203–6, http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2144967; Jens Andreas Christopherson,
The Meaning of “Democracy” as Used in European Ideologies from the French to the Russian
Revolutions (Oslo: Universititsforlaget, 1966); Markoff, “Democracy Invented,” 663–4, 671.
47 Peter Bachrach, The Theory of Democratic Elitism: A Critique (Boston: Little Brown, 1967).
48 John Curl, For All the People: Uncovering the Hidden History of Cooperation, Cooperative
Movements, and Communalism in America, 2nd edition (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2012), 215–
17.
49 Brian Wampler, “Participation, Representation, and Social Justice: Using Participatory
Governance to Transform Representative Democracy,” Polity 44, no. 4 (October 2012), 668,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/pol.2012.21.
50 Nita Rudra, Globalization and the Race to the Bottom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2008); Stephen Haggard and Robert R. Kaufman, Development, Democracy, and the Welfare
State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008); Carole Pateman, Participation and
Democratic Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970); Jack L. Walker, “A
Critique of the Elitist Theory of Democracy,” American Political Science Review 6 (1966): 285–
95, www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1953356.pdf?_=1465503204620; Warren, “Expect,” 241–70.
51 Luciano Canfora, Democracy in Europe (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 184, 229–
32; Wolin, Democracy, 159–83, 276–8; Brown, Undoing the Demos, 205.
52 Foucault argues that European law centered on questions of the constitution of the state and on
the legitimacy of the sovereign before the mid-eighteenth century, when the law functioned in a
restrictive way that was capable of defining a government as illegitimate. After that time,
Foucault finds documentary evidence that modern European liberalism comes to mean “how not
to govern too much” and “the question of the too much and the too little.” As a result, Foucault
finds that the market economy comes to constitute a general index that defines all governmental
action, reversing the relationship in eighteenth-century liberalism: Birth, 10, 28–9, 121.
53 Cunningham, Theories, 10, 27–51.
54 Wendy Brown, States of Injury, 5.
55 Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (New York: Harper, 1942), 269;
Ivison, “Democracy,” 358–9; Cunningham, Theories, 9–10, 48.
56 Wendy Brown, Edgework: Critical Essays in Knowledge and Politics (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2005), 37–9; Brown, Undoing the Demos, 28–9, 37–42, 168–72.
57 Michael Crozier, Samuel Huntington, and Joji Watanuku, The Crisis of Democracy: Report on
the Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission, http://trilateral.org/file/8,
accessed October 21, 2016.
58 Klein, Shock, 9–11, 140, 156.
59 Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1962),
“Preface,” ix, quoted in Klein, Shock, 140.
60 Klein, Shock, 131–41, 283–307, 406–22.
61 Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 17–46, 108–10; Klein, Shock, 102–3, 133–6, 144–54, 266–
72, 447–9.
62 Joseph Stiglitz, The Great Divide: Unequal Societies and What We Can Do about Them (New
York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2015); Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty- First Century
(Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014); Anthony B. Atkinson,
Inequality: What Can Be Done? (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015).
63 Klein, Shock, 86–95, 362, 405; François Bourguignon, The Globalization of Inequality, trans.
Thomas Scott-Railton (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015).
64 Cunningham, Theories, 9–10.
65 Cunningham, Theories, 46–51; Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the
Collège de France, 1978–1979, trans. Graham Burchell (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan UK,
2008), 28–9, 121.
66 Samir Amin, “Social Movements at the Periphery,” in New Social Movements in the South:
Empowering the People, ed. Ponna Wignaraja (London: Zed Books, 1993), 90.
67 Partha Chatterjee, The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the
World (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 3, 34–6; William I. Robinson, Promoting
Polyarchy: Globalization, US Intervention, and Hegemony (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1996), quoted in Makere Stewart-Harawira, The New Imperial Order: Indigenous
Responses to Globalization (New York: Zed Books, 2005), 156.
 Larry Diamond and Marc F. Plattner, “Introduction,” in Democracy: A Reader (Baltimore:
68 Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), xiv; Philippe Schmitter and Terry Lynn Karl, “What
Democracy Is … and Is Not,” in Democracy: A Reader, ed. Larry Jay Diamond and Marc F.
Plattner (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 15 n3; Samuel Huntington, The
Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1991).
69 Diamond and Plattner, “Introduction,” vii–viii.
70 Tully, “Unfreedom,” 212–14.
71 Robinson, Polyarchy, 55–62, quoted in Stewart-Harawira, Imperial Order, 156.
72 Brown, Edgework, 40–3.
73 Foucault, Birth of Biopolitics, 28–9, 121; Danielle Allen, Our Declaration: A Reading of the
Declaration of Independence in Defence of Equality (New York: Liveright Publishing
Corporation, a division of W.W. Norton & Company, 2015); Brown, Undoing the Demos, 17–
45; Brown, Edgework, 46–7; Sheldon Wolin, The Presence of the Past: Essays in the State and
the Constitution (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press), 150–208.
74 Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a
Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger with Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge:
MIT Press, 1989); Michael Kelly, Critique and Power: Recasting the Foucault/Habermas
Debates (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994). Spivak characterizes the public sphere as “the space
produced by patriarchal complicity, namely the state” (Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Resistance
That Cannot Be Recognized as Such,” in Conversations with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ed.
Swapan Chakravorty, Suzana Milevska, and Tani E. Barlow (New York: Seagull Books, 2006),
72–3) or the space of those trained in “the liberal European secular imaginary” (Spivak,
“Power/Knowledge,” 175).
75 Exceptions include those who share the Federalist suspicion of popular participation, such as
James Fishkin, Democracy and Deliberation: New Directions in Democratic Reform (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1991) and Joseph M. Bessette, The Mild Voice of Reason:
Deliberative Democracy and American National Government (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1994).
76 Ingeborg Maus, “Liberties and Popular Sovereignty: On Habermas’ Reconstruction of the
System of Rights,” Cardozo Law Review 17, no. 4–5 (1996): 875,
www.cardozolawreview.com/volume-17-issue-4.html; Hauptmann, “Leftist Deliberative
Democrats,” 403–4, 416–18.
77 David Held, Models of Democracy, 3rd edition (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006),
259–89; Sabine Lang, NGOs, Civil Society, and the Public Sphere (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2013), 110–17, 208–17; William DeMars, NGOs and Transnational Networks:
Wild Cards in World Politics (Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 2005), 6–63.
78 Lauren Berlant describes the choice of civil society or the public sphere as a source of hope in
the face of persistent evidence that the public sphere is a scene of exception and trauma as a
“ridiculously bad object choice,” and advocates for wandering the political zone without
recommitting to civil society: Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism (Durham, NC: Duke University
Press), 255–8. Among other recent criticisms of the public sphere, see Janet M. Conway, Edges
of Global Justice: The World Social Forum and Its “Others” (New York: Routledge, 2013), 70–
89, and Glen Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014), 79–82.
79 David Held, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan
Governance (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995); Jürgen Habermas, The Crisis of the
European Union: A Response, trans. Ciaran Cronin (Cambridge: Polity, 2012).
80 Jacques Rancière, Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy, trans. Julie Rose (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota, 1999); Conway, Edges, 83–5; Noëlle McAfee, Democracy and the
 Political Unconscious (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 19–27; Gayatri
Chakravorty Spivak, Death of a Discipline (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 38–9,
49, 54; Rodrigo Nunes, “Nothing Is What Democracy Looks Like: Openness, Horizontality, and
the Movement of Movements,” in Shut Them Down! The G8, Gleneagles 2005 and the
Movement of Movements, ed. D. Harvie, K. Milburn, B. Trott, and D. Watts (Brooklyn:
Autonomedia, 2005), 303–4, 311–12. See also the discussion of subaltern practices above and in
Chapter 3.
81 Conway, Edges, 70–1.
82 Ian Budge, The New Challenge of Direct Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996), 4.
83 Lynn Stephen, “Gender and Grassroots Organizing: Lessons from Chiapas,” in Women’s
Participation in Mexican Political Life, ed. Victoria Rodríguez (Boulder: Westview Press,
1998), 148.
84 Francesca Polletta, Freedom Is an Endless Meeting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2002), vii–ix, 1–20; Cunningham, Theories, 126, 129.
85 Budge, Challenge, 7.
86 Cunningham, Theories, 123, 129; Budge, Challenge, 7; Albert Weale, Democracy (Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 49–53; Hauptmann, “Leftist Deliberative Democrats,” 399, 413–19.
87 Cunningham, Theories, 141.
88 Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1983), 94.
89 David Matthews and Noëlle McAfee, Making Choices Together: The Power of Public
Deliberation (Dayton, OH: Charles F. Kettering Foundation, 1998), 3–5; Maude Pinney Kuhns,
The “Mary and John”: A Story of the Founding of Dorchester, Massachusetts, 1630 (Rutland:
Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1943); Daniel Elazar and John Kincaid, The Covenant Connection:
From Federal Theology to Modern Federation (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2000).
90 R.B. Rose, The Making of the Sans-Culottes: Democratic Ideas and Institutions in Paris, 1789–
92 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983); Kåre Tønneson, “La Démocratie Directe
Sous la Révolution Française,” in The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political
Culture, vol. 2, ed. Colin Lucas (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1988), 295–327.
91 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “The Social Contract,” in The Social Contract and Discourses, trans.
G.D.H. Cole (New York: EP Dutton, 1956), 93–6.
92 Carole Pateman, Participation and Democratic Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1970), 35; Peter Bachrach, The Theory of Democratic Elitism: A Critique (Boston: Little,
Brown), 70–8.
93 Michael Goodhart, “Polity Symposium: Deepening Democracy, an Introduction,” Polity 44, no.
4 (October 2012), 483, doi:10.1057/pol.2012.14; Enrique Peruzzotti, “Broadening the Notion of
Democratic Accountability: Participatory Innovations in Latin America,” Polity 44, no. 4
(October 2012): 625–42; Avritzer, Democracy, 52–4.
94 Pateman, Participation, 22–44; Peruzzotti, “Broadening,” 625–42; Avritzer, Democracy, 52–4,
145–8, 166–70.
95 Budge, Challenge, 35.
96 Cunningham, Theories, 128.
97 Monica Dias Martins, “Learning to Participate: The MST experience in Brazil,” in Promised
Land: Competing Visions of Agrarian Reform, ed. Peter Rosset, Raj Patel, and Michael
Courville (Oakland, CA: Food First Books, 2006), 265–76; Cunningham, Theories, 133.
98 Budge, Challenge, 12–17.
99 Crawford Brough Macpherson, The Life and Times of Liberal Democracy (Don Mills, ON: OUP
Canada, 2012), 98–108; Cunningham, Theories, 133, 140.
100 Foucault, Discipline, 170–94, 271–89; Jacques Derrida, “Structure, Sign, and Play in the
Discourse of the Human Sciences,” in Twentieth Century Literary Theory: An Introductory
 Anthology, ed. Vassilis Mambropoulos and David Neal Miller (Albany, NY: State University of
New York Press, 1987), 39–47.
101 Pat Devine, Democracy and Economic Planning (Oxford: Polity Press, 1988).
102 Patrick Heller, “Democracy, Participatory Politics, and Development: Some Comparative
Lessons from Brazil, India, and South Africa,” Polity 44, no. 4 (October 2012): 643–65, doi:
10.2307/41684508; Wampler, “Participation,” 666–82.
103 Goodhart, “Introduction,” 481; Participatory Budgeting Project, “Participatory Budgeting
Project,” accessed May 22, 2015, www.participatorybudgeting.org/.
104 Raúl Zibechi, Dispersing Power: Social Movements as Anti- State Forces, trans. Ramor Ryan
(Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2010), 33–9, 43–58.
105 Hilary Wainwright, Reclaim the State: Experiments in Popular Democracy (New York: Verso,
2003); Stewart-Harawira, Imperial, 157.
106 Michael Taylor, Community, Anarchy, and Liberty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1982); Cunningham, Theories, 126; Graeber, Democracy, 192–207.
107 Paul Hirst, Associative Democracy: New Forms of Economic and Social Governance (Amherst:
The University of Massachusetts Press, 1994), 15–43.
108 Taiaiake Alfred and Jeff Corntassel, “Being Indigenous: Resurgences against Contemporary
Colonialism,” Government and Opposition 40, no. 4 (2005): 597; Mahasveta Devi, Dust on the
Road: The Activist Writings of Mahasweta Devi, ed. Maitreya Ghatak (Calcutta: Seagull Books,
1997), 146–52; Guillermo Bonfil Batalla, México Profundo: Reclaiming a Civilization, trans.
Philip Dennis (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996), 168; June C. Nash, Mayan Visions: The
Quest for Autonomy in an Age of Globalization (New York: Routledge, 2001), 120; Spivak,
“Power/ Knowledge,” 163–5.
109 Steven Muhlberger and Phil Paine. “Democracy’s Place in World History,” Journal of World
History 4, no. 1 (1993): 23–45, www.jstor.org.ccl.idm.oclc.org/stable/20078545; Janet Conway
and Jakeet Singh, “Radical Democracy in Global Perspective: Notes from the Pluriverse,” Third
World Quarterly 32, no. 4 (2011): 61–84, doi: 10.1080/01436597.2011.570029.
110 Ponna Wignaraja, “Rethinking Development and Democracy.” In New Social Movements in the
South: Empowering the People, ed. Ponna Wignaraja (Atlantic Highlands: Zed Books, 1993),
18–20; Harsh Sethi, “Action Groups in the New Politics,” in New Social Movements in the
South: Empowering the People, ed. Ponna Wignaraja (Atlantic Highlands: Zed Books, 1993),
236–41; John Holloway, “Power and Democracy.” New Politics 9, no. 4 (Winter, 2004): 138–41,
http://newpol.org/content/new-politics-vol-ix-no-4-whole-number-36.
111 Barbara Epstein, “The Politics of Prefigurative Community: The Non-Violent Direct Action
Movement,” in Reshaping the US Left: Popular Struggles in the 1980s, vol. 3, ed. Mike Davis
and Michael Sprinker (London: Verso, 1988), 63–92.
112 Grace Lee Boggs, “The Beloved Community of Martin Luther King,” Yes! Magazine, May 20,
2004, www.yesmagazine.org/issues/a-conspiracy-of-hope/the-beloved-community-of-martin-
luther-king, accessed June 20, 2016.
113 Marina Sitrin, Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina (Oakland, CA: AK Press,
2006).
114 Ibid., vi, 2–3.
115 John Holloway, Crack Capitalism (London; New York: Pluto Press, 2010), 44, 230–1.
116 Boggs, “Beloved”; Spivak, “French Feminism,” 166–70; John Holloway, Change the World
without Taking Power (London: Pluto Press, 2005), 231.
117 Gilles Deleuze, “What is an Event?” in The Deleuze Reader, ed. Constantin V. Boundas, trans.
Mark Lester and Charles Stivale (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 42–8.
118 Chatterjee, Politics, 27–41; Rancière, Disagreement, 15–19.
119 Donatella della Porta and Dieter Rucht, “Power and Democracy in Social Movements: An
Introduction,” in Meeting Democracy: Power and Deliberation in Global Justice Movements,
 ed. Donatella della Porta and Dieter Rucht (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 5–
7. Further discussion of continuing inequalities will be found throughout the chapters to come.
120 Epstein, “Prefigurative Community,” 88–9, 91, 92 n5; Graeber, Democracy Project, 192–207.
121 John Holloway, “From Scream of Refusal to Scream of Power: The Centrality of Work,” in
Open Marxism, vol. 3, Emancipating Marx, ed. Werner Bonefeld, Richard Gunn, John
Holloway, and Kosmas Psychopedis (London: Pluto Press, 1995), 155–81.
122 Leo Gabriel and Gilberto López y Rivas, Autonomías indígenas en América Latina: Nuevas
formas de convivencia política (Mexico City: UAM-Plaza y Valdés, 2005); Héctor Díaz-
Polanco, Indigenous Peoples in Latin America: The Quest for Self-Determination (Oxford:
Westview Press, 1997).
123 Yann Moulier, “Introduction,” in Antonio Negri, The Politics of Subversion (Cambridge: Polity
Press, 1989), 1–44.
124 Marina Sitrin, Everyday Revolutions: Horizontalism and Autonomy in Argentina. (New York:
Zed Books, 2012), 10–11.
125 Cornelius Castoriadis, “Democracy as Procedure and Regime,” Constellations 4, no. 1 (1997):
1–18. doi: 10.1111/1467–8675.00032.
126 Raúl Zibechi, Dispersing Power: Social Movements as Anti-State Forces, trans. Ramor Ryan
(Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2010), 122–40; Rodolfo Stavenhagen, “Towards the Right to
Autonomy in Mexico,” in Indigenous Autonomy in Mexico, ed. Aracely Burguete Cal y Mayor
(Copenhagen: IWGIA, 2000), 10–23; Mario Blaser, Indigenous Peoples and Autonomy: Insights
for a Global Age (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2010); Cristina Flesher
Fominaya, “Debunking Spontaneity: Spain’s 15-M/Indignados as Autonomous Movement,”
Social Movement Studies 14, no. 22 (2015), 145, doi: 10.1080/14742837.2014.945075; Sitrin,
Everyday Revolutions, 4.
127 Thomson, Deconstruction, 41–4.
128 Thomson, Deconstruction, 46–7.
129 Arturo Escobar, “Actors, Networks, and New Knowledge Producers,” in Cognitive Justice in a
Global World: Prudent Knowledges for a Decent Life, ed. Boaventura de Sousa Santos
(Lanham: Lexington Books, 2007), 177–81; Paul Patton, Deleuze and the Political (New York:
Routledge, 2000), 65–7; Manuel De Landa, A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000).
130 Manuel Castells, The City and the Grassroots: A Cross- Cultural Theory of Urban Social
Movements (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983); Rodrigo Nunes, “Networks, Open
Spaces, and Horizontality: Instantiations,” Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organizations 5,
no. 2 (2005): 297–318, www.ephemerajournal.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/5–2ephemera-
may05.pdf; Jeffrey Juris, Networking Futures: The Movements against Corporate Globalization
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008).
131 “[O]ne keeps this indefinite right to the question, to criticism, to deconstruction (guaranteed
rights, in principle, in any democracy: no deconstruction without democracy, no democracy
without deconstruction).” Jacques Derrida, The Politics of Friendship, trans. George Collins
(New York: Verso, 2005), 105, quoted in Thomson, Deconstruction, 1, 30; see also Thomson,
Deconstruction, 19, 22, 25, 31.
132 Derrida, Friendship, 105; Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of
Mourning, and the New International, trans. Peggy Kamuf (New York: Routledge, 1994), 86;
Thomson, Deconstruction, 1, 12, 20–5, 28–31, 57, 72–4, 87–8, 147.
133 Thomson, Deconstruction, 3–4, 16.
134 Ibid., 12–17, 73.
135 Ibid., 22–3, 29.
136 Conway, Edges, 101–16; Benjamin Barber, Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New
Age (Berkeley: University of California Press), 1984.
 Conway, Edges, 95–7; Jeffrey Juris, Networking Futures: The Movements against Corporate
137 Globalization (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), 34–49.
138 Conway, Edges, 97–100.
139 Sitrin, Everyday Revolutions, 83–100, 203–24; Kam Shapiro, Sovereign Nations, Carnal States
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), 127–67.
140 Here I pursue an analogy with Gayatri Spivak’s unpacking of the term “woman” in her speaking
of feminism as an approach to working within and against the limits of terms universalized
under Eurocentric modern global capital. In her analysis, Spivak develops a “provisional and
polemical” reading of the term “not in terms of a woman’s putative essence but in terms of
words currently in use … even as I question the enterprise of redefining the premises of any
theory:” “Feminism,” 54. This essay is part of Spivak’s interest in strategic essentialist political
practice, which she rejects in her more recent work, as discussed in “Scattered Speculations on
the Subaltern and the Popular.”
141 Plato, Menexenus, in Plato, the Collected Dialogues, trans. Benjamin Jowett, ed. Edith
Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961), 186–99,
quoted in Thomson, Deconstruction, 19.
142 Paul Demont, “Allotment and Democracy in Ancient Greece,” Books and Ideas.net, December
13, 2010, accessed August 3, 2015, www.booksandideas.net/Allotment-and-Democracy-in-
Ancient.html.
143 Exceptions are found in Jeffrey Winters, Oligarchy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2011) and Douglas Dowd, Capitalism and Its Economics: A Critical History, rev. ed. (Ann
Arbor: Pluto Press, 2004), 6–7.
144 Derrida, Rogues, xiii, 99–101.
145 Brown, States, 5.
146 Tully, “Unfreedom,” 205–6.

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Part II
Specific Sites for Practicing Equality
2 Heritage Democracies
Indigenous Equality in Practice

Democratic practices in Indigenous communities and movements are not

restricted to those modeled on the modern nation state.1 Although some
Indigenous communities have adopted practices modeled on the modern
nation state, often as a result of direct or indirect pressure by modern states,
they often preserve heritage practices that have different histories. These
forms challenge the norms that come from Europe through the violences of
the colonial and imperial histories, demonstrating that not all democracies
are understandable under the same universal categories.2
Many Indigenous communities have long practiced shared land practices
and shared work and other responsibilities, and these shared activities have
in some cases led to consensus-based decision-making mechanisms.
Sharing land and other resources is sometimes referred to as the commons,
a widely found community-centered practice that has come to be less
widely practiced as a result of the invasion of private property and other
individualist practices of capitalist economies and their affiliated modern
institutions, such as the legal regime of the modern nation state. Yet, many
Indigenous communities continue to practice both the sharing of land and
other resources and the decision-making mechanisms that existed before the
modern state and that still may be found in Indigenous communities.3
Many Indigenous communities use some combination of frequent local
assemblies and regional or even national assemblies as a platform for direct
participation in decision-making. Some communities also deploy collective
leadership at multiple levels of the organization, and a rotating system of
selecting administrative officers to reduce cronyism and other forms of
corruption and entrenched narrow interests.4 These practices reject the
representative democratic practices and party politics of the states with
which they are often in low-level or open conflict, even as some of them
use systems of representative delegates along with safeguards to keep them
accountable to the general will.5
This chapter introduces four sites for egalitarian democratic practice in
Indigenous communities. These sites help explore the ways in which
democracy may be reimagined based on multiple concrete historical
practices found in our own day. The limiting force on democracy of the
terms enforced by the modern European nation is very powerful, and carries
out what can be called a form of colonial intelligibility.6 So, this chapter
works to refuse such a domestication of Indigenous democracy.
Our efforts to understand Indigenous approaches to egalitarian
governance work to recognize these practices as making important
contributions to global historical processes on their own terms. Yet, our
terms are limited within the vocabulary and set of assumptions we have
inherited.7 These limits are active in language, as seen in the Introduction
discussion of the Okanagan practice of en’owkinwiwx, and also present in
more subtle ways that will be the focus of the discussion coming in this
chapter. Because the struggle with the colonizing limits of state electoral
democracies is continual, it is often difficult to render intelligible in liberal
humanist terms the ways in which Indigenous peoples enact active agency,
due to the many pressures to go along with the modern state.8 These
struggles are major sites of difference at work for Indigenous communities.
In settler colonies such as the United States, Argentina, or South Africa,
Indigenous peoples preceded the settlers and are Others in time. In areas
where a single ethnic group controls a large territory occupied by many
other ethnic groups, such as Nigeria, China, or Thailand, Indigenous
peoples are ethnically Other to the group whose members occupy most
political offices. When an Indigenous group has been granted recognition
by the state, it then presents another Other: one that has a certain amount of
limited sovereignty parallel to and in competition with the state, as in the
autonomous regions of Pakistan or China and the reservations and reserves
of the United States and Canada.
Naming the Others of the modern state is always a highly politicized
event. The lack of analysis of Indigenous self-governance in discussions of
democracy, despite their significant size in the past and present and their
historical importance, demonstrates that thinking about democracy is
narrowly considered. Some estimates suggest that the number of Indigenous
communities today is as many as 7,000, and that their total population is
between 300 and 500 million, or around 5 percent of the global population,
although agreement on these estimates is notoriously difficult to establish.9
These communities have extensive experience with lifestyles that differ
significantly from the lifestyles familiar to those who follow a European-
derived middle-class or urban way of life. Members of many of these
communities continue to practice subsistence agriculture in rural areas
while also being found in urban areas. Some also practice swidden
agriculture, also known as slash-and-burn agriculture, estimated to be
practiced by some 200–500 million people worldwide at present10 and also
practiced by many members of the Karen, discussed below. So, their
democratic practices are linked to economic, social, and cultural practices
that differ in significant ways from those advocated by most modern states.
Most importantly, Indigenous forms of self-governance are under attack
by the modern state and its allies. These communities are under siege, and
in many cases, their very survival is at risk. Some communities are already
extinct as defined cultural, linguistic, social, and even genetic population
groups, even as others are forcefully being displaced from their homelands
and from their lifestyles. The expansion of market systems into the most
distant regions of the modern nation state may ensure the end of many more
long-established social, cultural, and economic practices.11 Yet others
survive into the present through sheer endurance, retaining what they can of
heritage practices.
As a term in a colonizer’s language that has been debated and explicitly
rejected by a number of groups, the English term “Indigenous” is clearly
not a satisfactory term. Yet, like many of the terms used throughout this
book, the term “Indigenous” will still be used on condition that it is
supplemented by the violent conditions that surround it and the other terms
that haunt it. The term “Indigenous” itself has a long, contested history, and
remains tangled up in multiple, overlapping histories of colonization by
Europeans and other distant groups as well as by neighboring groups, of
displacement from land and forced migrations, of disenfranchisement by
representative states, of economic poverty and social dehumanization, of
cultural and linguistic siege, and other histories.12 Varying in size from tens
of millions to smaller groups on the verge of cultural and linguistic
extinction, from minorities to majorities in some nations, racially
homogeneous and racially diverse, rural and urban, agrarian and hunter-
gatherer or swidden, national or transnational, immersed in tradition to
different extents and responding to contemporary pressures as well, many
work to define themselves in their own terms rather being defined by what
they are not. Some of these specific factors will be introduced for the four
Indigenous groups discussed below as they effect equality in their specific
communities.
Consensus-based assemblies form the basis for many Indigenous
governance practices, though they often exceed the limits of the concept of
“assembly.”13 The four groups that will occupy the center of this chapter
have been selected because they are relatively well known and because their
egalitarian practices have been comparatively well documented. Many
members of these communities now reside on the lands where they
historically have been based, in some cases with histories of large-scale,
powerful governance (Iroquois) and in other cases smaller-scale governance
histories (Karen). Some have come together with neighboring communities
(Iroquois, Aymara, Zapatista) and some have not (Karen); some have been
involved in recent or ongoing armed conflict with the modern states that
now rule their historical territories (Zapatista, Karen), and some have
subordinated themselves more peacefully to the modern state(s) that now
rule their land. Beyond these four communities are many other communities
whose histories are comparable and whose practices are also egalitarian.
Those who support the unequal relations that characterize modern states
and modern capitalism and socialism have described the egalitarian
practices of the Karen and other Indigenous groups as

the raw and the cooked, the wild and the tamed, the hill/forest people
and the valley/cleared-land people, upstream and downstream, the
barbarian and the civilized, the backward and the modern, the free and
the bound, the people without history and the people with history.14

These descriptions often privilege those who would subordinate their local
interests to the inequalities of the modern state, a social form that is
associated with civilization and advanced cultures, in a way that encourages
communities, regions, and individuals to submit to state sovereignty,
taxation, conscription and other forms of unfree labor, and other
homogenizing and consolidating measures.15 Many communities and
individuals have responded to these demands by various means to retain
some power over their own affairs, including physical movement,
sometimes into highland areas16 or other areas difficult to access for the
modern state, but also including multiple strategies to disguise and
otherwise dissemble their continuing interest in governing themselves in
ways that manage to satisfy the centralized, hierarchical state while also
retaining some decision-making powers.17 We will see in the pages to come
multiple examples of these strategies, deployed not only to guard against
the modern state but also to ward off the danger to egalitarian relations of
centralized power and its attendant loss of sovereignty for the majority
within local and regional communities.
While the term “Indigenous” has so far been used as if it had some
coherence, we will find that specific Indigenous groups do not present a
unified form of difference. In addition to cultural and historical differences,
there are many differences within each self-identified community, ranging
from language and cultural differences, to differences between rural and
urban community members and degrees of assimilation into colonizing and
neighboring cultures and communities, to gender and class differences.
There are also complex relations between those community members who
see themselves as representative of the heritage community and those who
see themselves as entangled with other communities and populations. And
all of these overlapping differences are also at work in each individual
community member, and in each community, as they work to identify
members and outsiders, locals and visitors, allies and enemies. Each of
these factors is discussed below and debated in specific Indigenous
communities. These have particular historic contexts that shape the debates,
varying degrees of consensus and division that have developed historically,
and complex relations to neighboring communities, to outside interests such
as transnational corporations and the nation state, as well as to national and
regional and even global legal bodies.
These multiple differences also make Indigenous heritages dynamic and
changeable. Some may see Indigenous communities as bound by tradition,
but don’t be fooled. The association of Indigenous communities with
unchanging tradition establishes an implicit contrast with the dynamic,
rapidly changing “modern” institutions and individuals.18 Rather than
allowing this contrast to shape the approach to Indigenous communities
here, we will follow the characterization of an Indigenous Guatemalan
scholar, Gladys Tzul Tzul, who argues that Indigenous cultures are
changing all the time to respond to concrete conditions. For her, no
Indigenous community lives out some pure form of tradition; rather, they
transform the past to meet the present.19 So, it takes work to trace how
heritages are changing in response to changing conditions, and how
difference is part of that process.
In the end, we may constructively ask how to do the work of democracy
with uncertainty at the center of the project. This requires operating at times
without knowing “Who are the people?” with any certainty, to open up
change that cannot be predicted.20 This uncertainty rejects the temptation to
speak from, for, or to “the people,” not to ignore or exclude Indigenous
groups but to dislodge the norms that shape the boundary of self and Other,
Indigenous and non-Indigenous. We will see that these practices are
important for the communities described below, as they work across
boundaries dividing Indigenous from mestizos or mixed-race people (in the
Aymara and Zapatista movements) and Indigenous from métis (for the
Iroquois), even as these communities also build movements that extend well
beyond the seemingly fixed identities of Indigenous in their own local
settings, in their nations, and transnationally. To carry out this practice,
difference does its work through these destabilized identities and unknown
futures that hold the promise of something some may not yet know: full,
participatory democracy.

Aymara

The ayllu networks of the Aymara and other peoples of the area provide an
Indigenous egalitarian practice that contrasts with electoral democracy.
Through the period of various colonizing and postcolonial European-
derived political and economic practices, the ayllu has provided a parallel
governance process to European practices before and after liberation from
direct Spanish political control. This history has provided the Aymara with
options, since the modern European state has been only one among multiple
understandings of self-governance, knowing, and living.21
The Aymara have been in a relationship of distrust and confrontation
with the modern nation state of Bolivia since it was founded in 1825.22 At
that time, the state was named after the anticolonial revolutionary Simón
Bolivar, but racism continued in relations between the Indigenous and
African-descended residents and the descendants of colonizers. The Aymara
historically have lived in frequent interaction with the Quechua in the
Andean highlands and the Andean plateau stretching across parts of what
are now known as the modern nation states of Peru, Bolivia, and the
northern tips of Chile and Argentina. The Aymara live as Others both to the
modern state, in both its autocratic and electoral forms, and to the
neighboring Quechua Indigenous communities, with whom they often
work.
Many in the contemporary period look back to the 1952 overthrow of the
oligarchy that installed universal suffrage as the beginning of a decade of
electoral democracy ending in 1964. Those who still find democracy to be
practiced electorally may not notice that it was with the assistance of the
U.S. CIA, a body directed by an elected leader, that this decade of electoral
democracy ended in Bolivia. In the early 1980s, as the autocratic state
began to move again towards electoral democracy in Bolivia and Peru,
unpopular shock therapy was installed in Bolivia by the newly elected
former president in 1985 under the advice of Jeffrey Sachs, a young
economist with no development experience but a strong belief in neoliberal
policies and shifting all the social costs onto the poor. In the words of one
Bolivian banker, who compared the new President Paz to the brutal Chilean
dictator Augusto Pinochet, “The things Pinochet did with a bayonet, Paz
has done within a democratic system.”23 When the labor unions rebelled,
Paz arrested 1,500 and put the country’s top 200 union leaders onto planes
and shipped them off to isolated villages in the remote Amazon basin in a
mass kidnapping. With union leadership removed, the new president was
able to privatize many sectors of the economy, install anti-inflation policies
that devastated poor communities, and shrink the middle class and working
class by eliminating whole sectors of workers.24 So, electoral democracy
was not a positive option for many in Bolivia after the 1980s.
The contemporary practices of the ayllu draw on a long tradition of
Indigenous community structures in the Andean regions. The governance
traditions of the Andean governing structure known as the ayllu have been
recorded in an early document dating from the seventeenth century, The
First New Chronicle and Good Government, by a descendant of the
Quechua rulers, Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala (c.1535 – after 1616).25
Based on travels among the ayllu communities of the Aymara and Quechua
in the Andean plateau and across the highlands, Guaman Poma describes
the social, political, cultural, and spiritual dimensions shared by the Aymara
and Quechua in the ayllu. The leaderless structures still used in the present
millennium by some Aymara communities emphasize community-based
decision-making through ayllu social structures, regularly rotating
leadership, and mass meetings and assemblies, such as neighborhood
assemblies.26 These practices have proven very effective in displacing local
and even national representative governments. At times, they have been
useful in directly confronting European-derived representative electoral
governance with Indigenous democratic practices.27
Many of the Aymara people of the Andes in Bolivia live in large
extended families and participate in a monthly communal decision-making
process attended by the head of every household.28 Since their communities
have been impacted for many centuries by European imperialism, the
communities’ relationship to this communal participatory governance
process is not simple, and many community members now govern
themselves through Spanish-inherited community mechanisms centering on
the church and public state buildings as well.29 So, there are complex
differences among the Aymara, many of whom participate in multiple forms
of governance related at the same time to Spanish colonial heritages, the
modern state administrative apparatus, and Indigenous neighborhood
bodies. The way in which each person carries out the multiple, overlapping,
and often contradictory pressures from the different structures, institutions,
and regions is also shaped by rural and urban differences, highland/
lowland, gender, race and class, and other factors.
The ayllu practices have taken various forms over the centuries, ranging
from family structures, to neighborhood organizations, to social
movements, to national political parties. Recent written statements of
Aymara practices may be found in the 1970s, when groups of farmers,
teachers, and students synthesized their agrarian social movement in the
Tiwanaku Manifesto.30 The struggle to assert the autonomy of ayllu
structures continued under electoral democracy through the 1980s.31 Unlike
the ayllu structures, some Peasant Union and other union structures
organized themselves in a hierarchical, centralized manner during the same
decades.32 The Katarist Liberation Movement pamphlet of 1990, The Social
Model of the Ayllu, emphasizes the centrality of cooperation between the
ayllu through a system of reciprocity and rotating authorities directly
accountable to the community members.33 In the early years of the uprisings
of 2000–4, the Achacachi Manifesto was issued, outlining the importance
of mass meetings and assemblies for decision-making, and rotating duties to
carry out the road blockades and other tactics of the social movements.34 At
their peak in 2000–2, the movements covered the entire Andean plateau and
parts of the valley of La Paz, impacting the entire nation of Bolivia.35
Specific events can be identified when the historic practices of the
Aymara impacted local governance decisions that are framed by the modern
state in terms of citizenship and party politics. One such series of events
emerged from the everyday rural village presence of the ayllu, burst onto
the national scene as an orchestrated imposition of roadblocks in April
2000, and continued in a crescendo of massive community uprisings though
2000 and 2001. As a structure of the impoverished, rural communities, the
ayllu practices are not generally widely visible, but when they mobilized to
impact the regional economy and the authority of the state, their visibility
rose dramatically.36 Yet, the importance of the ayllu extends beyond the
interruption of representative democratic state governance.
Another such moment occurred over a period of two years from 2000 to
2001 in the large city of Cochabamba and its surrounding valleys in “a vast
sea of circulating opinions, proposals, and discussions.”37 After the local
irrigation organizations had begun in the period 1992–2000 to revive
communitarian water management practices, they began to formally
incorporate as a federation with the community assembly as their final
authority.38 Then, in the years 2000–1, the Indigenous and non-Indigenous
community members decided to “change the law rather than…. Restricting
the collective will to fit the regulatory framework,” leading the community
to turn to “the constituent assembly [as] a way to recover and exercise
political sovereignty, meaning the capacity for decision-making and
participation in public affairs, which is currently mortgaged in the political
party system.”39 The Indigenous movement participants in the water wars in
the valley around Cochabamba came gradually and chaotically to practice
forms of democratic governance based on traditional organizations in
collective participatory assemblies, on local production of needs, and on
highway blockades and rotating neighborhood duties.40
This does not mean that all Aymara agree on the main focus for
democracy, as debates and struggles involving readily recognized leaders,
such as Eugenio Rojas or Felipe Quispe41 and the soon-elected Bolivian
president Evo Morales,42 demonstrate. This mode of organizing was
unfamiliar even to some among those participating in the movement, as is
seen in the confusion about the name of the collective decision-making
body, known as “The Coordinator” (La Coordinadora), which some
participants in their meetings at times demanded to meet in person,
mistakenly assuming she was a woman.43 As the popular movements forced
the government to recognize this not yet formally institutionalized body as
legitimate, the body drew on its independent material resources and
political thinking to establish new forms of political autonomy.44 The
impact this had on the community was that “people lost their fear … people
recovered their voice … people understood they could win…. They
presented themselves as independent, meaning as a group of people who
could meet, plan, decide, and achieve a goal.”45
Nor were all decisions carried out by practicing equality. Organizations
such as those of the El Alto Federation of Neighborhood Councils
(FEJUVE) meet monthly or more frequently when needed, with men and
women, young and old, in attendance, and make many decisions by voting.
However, if the issues being discussed seem to hold unusual importance,
then the neighborhood council changes its practices and carries out its
business in a way that requires consensus to be reached by all.46 This shift
from electoral to consensus practices when there is a topic of high
importance demonstrates their understanding of full participation as a
leverage point for accountability to all during times of major community
transformation.
Democracy in the ayllu tradition is not grounded in citizenship or voting
or loyalty to the state, but to the land and a history of residence in particular
geographic areas. The ayllu produces equality via the assemblies that hold
members accountable to the community members, particularly in the
consensus decision-making process central to the assembly meetings. The
importance of equality is seen in the decision to use consensus for
important decisions in FEJUVE and other organizations. While the
visibility of the Aymara ayllu has come about through its struggles against
the state and state neoliberal policies, which are part of a long-standing
struggle for the past two decades and the past five centuries, the ayllu as a
structure does not revolve around the state.
Misnaming is very common in the contested fields where we find
ourselves in these explorations. We may begin a discussion of misnaming
with what looks like a simple translation issue: why won’t scholars and
critics translate the term ayllu that is so central to the Aymara? Some
analysts use modern notions of the family to render this term as a simple
reference to the collective work and economic production carried out in the
extended family, which contrasts with the modern nuclear family. Others
argue that the term centers on knowledge production and spirituality in a
manner that is not captured by kinship and modern conceptions of the
family.47 Yet others point to the centrality of the ayllu in nonstate forms of
justice, justice that takes the integrity of the community as central rather
than the coercive enforcement of unequal social order.48 As a significant
alternative to electoral representative state politics, certainly the term ayllu
seems to exceed the kin relations so important to anthropologists and the
limits of the modern nuclear family.
One difference of the ayllu practices from European-model democracy is
seen in the terms under which work is distributed in the ayllu. Ayllu
members do not see themselves as voting citizens of the electoral
representative state who exercise their rights through private property
ownership and political party participation. Instead, they use a practice of
dual complementarity through work exchange based on balances distributed
across pairs (such as feminine–masculine or up–down). The work
distributions are kept fair based on constant revisiting of agreements and
negotiations.49 These principles are much in operation on the everyday level
and in local events such as agricultural production and festivals, but as ayllu
bodies worked with other organizations and political practices to address
larger-scale concerns, some tensions did result.50
Misnaming is much more than a linguistic issue. The considerable
difficulties of establishing the legal status of the newly formed body known
as The Coordinator and other assembly-based decision-making bodies in
Cochabamba, discussed above, give us one sign of the persistent problem.
Specific laws were even passed in Bolivia to compete with and to erode the
recognizability and legal status of these organizations, and to replace them
with liberal, electorally based legislative and administrative bodies in the
modern European mold.51 These legal and legislative battles over
recognition and authority show the electoral state in direct conflict with
assembly-based equality in practice. They also bring to the surface some
indications of the high stakes when a rival to the unequal hierarchies of the
state emerges from an equalizing tradition, a process we will see again in
future chapters.
Karen

We find in Southeast Asia numerous Indigenous communities that practice

egalitarian governance methods today. One social scientist has identified
the Karen, discussed here, as one such group that practices equality, along
with the Wa, the Lisu, the Miao (sometimes known as the Hmong, a major
subgroup), the Lahu, and the Mien (also known as the Yao). These
Indigenous communities range in size from smaller communities of around
one million to the largest of nine million, and they practice a largely
decentralized form of self-governance, parallel to, and in some cases in
rivalry or even conflict with, the modern states in the region.52 Among these
groups, the conflict of the Karen with the modern state of Burma (also
known as Myanmar) has brought it to international attention.
The success of the Karen of Southeast Asia in continuing egalitarian
governance of their own affairs is shown by their surviving the best efforts
of the various kingdoms, empires, and modern states to incorporate them
into a vertically centralized territorial sovereignty. As highland tribes active
in mountainous regions along the Salween River and surrounding areas
since before 1700,53 the present-day Karen population is found in the
modern states of both Burma and Thailand. The Karen also practiced more
centralized, less democratic political forms when they founded their own
small kingdoms in the late sixteenth century and settled in lowland areas in
the Irrawaddy basin at least as early as the mid-eighteenth century.54 Yet,
from what is now known of their social structure, their smaller villages in
the highlands made it possible to continue egalitarian practices and resist
incorporation into the Kon-buang kingdom in the late eighteenth century
and into the centralized Burman kingdom in the post-1784 era.55 Both the
Siamese kingdom in what is now central Thailand and the Yuan or Khon
Muang of what is now Northern Thailand of the eighteenth century
recognized the Karen as an independent political entity, and some have
argued that their documented presence extends back to the thirteenth
century.56 Rule from Bangkok did incorporate some Karen leaders into the
imperial hierarchy during the Bangkok ascendancy of 1780–1850, when
some Karen leaders also developed political and commercial ties with Thai
centers after 1770.57 However, we shall see shortly that the modern Thai
state has not maintained strong relations with the Karen communities, and
only established an office for Tribal Research in 1968 in order to learn more
about the communities so as to strengthen centralized state control.58
The contested relations of the Karen with the modern state are carried out
on many fronts, including most famously the armed Karen resistance to the
government of Burma (also called Myanmar) that continues to the present.
Unsuccessful efforts of the Burmese ethnic rulers of the modern nation state
to incorporate the Karen under their rule can be seen in the naming of two
eastern states, Karen State (also Kayin State) and Kayah State, after Karen
subgroups. The Karen rebelled against the Union of Burma when Burma
was first established as a modern, independent state after World War II,
however, and armed conflict has continued since that time.
Like many of the Indigenous groups discussed here, the Karen are known
by names that have troubled histories. Though the origins of the term
“Karen” are debated, some anthropologists and linguists have argued that
the term as it exists in the Thai and Burmese languages derives from the
name given to the linguistic group by another Indigenous group known as
the Mon, probably as an outcome of the conflicts of the late eighteenth
century.59 So, naming the Karen with a name from a language and culture
not their own may mean that referring to the Karen is troubled by this
gesture of rejecting self-definition in the records of the modern state and
modern social science.60
As the government of the modern Thai state came to subsume the Karen
into the general category of “hill tribes,” based on the Thai relations with a
different group known as the Meo, a number of problems have emerged for
the Karen. The hill tribes have been associated by the Thai government
since World War II with swidden or slash-and-burn agriculture, which the
government prohibits but which characterizes only some of the Karen; with
illegal cultivation of opium, which very few Karen grow; and with illegal
immigrants to the country, who do not represent the vast majority of the
Karen. So, the official government designation of the Karen as hill tribes
has made relations very difficult. While a significant percentage of Karen
on the Thai side of the border live in lowland villages where wet-rice
agriculture is possible, the majority of Karen have long lived in the steep
hills of northwestern and west central Thailand, where sedentary agriculture
is largely impossible. This means that the prohibition of swidden cultivation
effectively attacks their right to access to their traditional means of
livelihood as being against the law.61 The difficulties of naming the Karen
as a group suggest that we might take this name for the community as a
problem, rather than a solution that allows us to conveniently combine all
we know about the group and assume homogeneity and consistency.
While Burma, more recently renamed by the military government as
Myanmar, did not practice electoral democracy from 1960 to 2015,
Thailand’s claims to democracy have not prevented the Thai government
from denying the Karen citizenship for many decades.62 The association by
the Thai government of the Karen with armed rebellion in Burma and with
the hill tribes in Thailand led for several decades to the total exclusion of
the Karen from participation in the political system above the village level.
Those Karen speakers who have come to identify themselves as Thai
alongside their Karen identities included only a small handful of individuals
in the 1960s, among them a small number of wealthy teak lumber
businessmen and a banker, and even a Karen elected to the Provincial
Assembly in 1968. This limited assimilation was made possible by the
efforts of the Thai government in the 1960s to begin to build Thai-language
schools in some villages, the success of some Christian and Buddhist
missionaries in teaching Karen village residents the Thai language as part of
their religious proselytizing, the intervention of Buddhist missionaries
sponsored by the Thai government, and even the occasional efforts of the
Thai king to take an interest in the hill tribes and advocate for Karen
citizenship in limited individual cases.63 This history makes it clear that
democracy’s claim to equal participation for the Karen as citizens in the
modern Thai state in these decades was troubled.
The relationship of the Karen to literacy is complicated by multiple,
overlapping, and at times competing systems of writing for their language.
Nineteenth-century American Baptists working among the Sgaw dialect-
speaking Karen developed an adapted Burmese script for writing Karen,
which became more popular than a Roman script developed by Catholic
missionaries, and is still used to publish books, magazines, newspapers, and
other publications. Christian missionaries working among the Pwo dialect-
speaking Karen have also developed a Thai script for transcribing that
dialect. This means that if Karen literacy is established in the Burmese-
adapted script, which has been used for several dialects beyond the Sgaw, it
orients the writer or reader towards Burma, whether they live in Burma or
Thailand, and towards Christianity, whether they are secular, Buddhist, or
Christian, and/or practice the Indigenous religious beliefs. Literacy in Thai,
which became available in the last decades of the twentieth century through
government schools in Karen villages or in lowland towns where some
Karen live, is important for Karen who wish to obtain training for any skills
or social settings outside of local villages or the Baptist or Catholic
Church.64 At war with the Burmese government and prohibited from Thai
citizenship for decades, their means of subsistence outlawed in Thailand
and their own language unreadable in the Thai script, named by their
neighbors and not by themselves, the Karen situation makes a mockery of
any claims to equal representation under Thai electoral democracy.
The Karen over the years have developed an ability to evade state efforts
to subordinate the group and enforce more hierarchical social structures on
them. Karen society’s autonomous, supple social structure65 means
tremendous flexibility across not only kinship structures and subsistence
practices but also culture and even architecture. One important safeguard of
their egalitarian practices is their mobility: any time their own sovereignty
is threatened, they simply move away, at times scattering, fissioning,
disaggregating, reconstituting, and shifting subsistence routines or
languages and cultural practices in order to avoid losing their equal
relations.66 This makes it impossible for a centralized authority, such as an
imperial administrator or state official, to fix the community long enough to
enforce unequal structures. Unlike the modern state, which is anchored in
territorial sovereignty, the Karen practice a form of self-governance that is
remarkably mobile, as might be expected from their swidden agricultural
practices.
At times, the very existence of the units that the historian or government
official relies on, such as village or tribe, is called into question, and in the
view of one commentator even “becomes an almost metaphysical issue”67
or “an artifact of the imperial imagination.”68 Some social science
specialists have argued that the Karen egalitarian practices characterize
societies that “self-consciously contradict the forms and values of their
more state-like neighbors.”69 In this way, the Karen produce a zone of
refuge from the hierarchies and inequities of nearby kingdoms and the
modern state.70 Ultimately, the willingness to subject oneself to the unequal
character of the modern state is a political question, one that may be
answered differently by those who have a range of possible practices
beyond the modern state.
 While the Karen seem to be successful at decentralizing power relations
in their communities, they have not been effective at producing gender
equality and other equality across established social differences. Gender
inequalities are entrenched in many of their communities, so while there
may be more equality among men, it does not extend to women. Some of
these difficulties are reinforced through the official practices of local
Burmese and Thai governments, which rarely allow women to be listed as
landholders or heads of household, even when the male holding title has
been deceased for many years.71 Yet, the conflict with the Burmese state has
also provided women with opportunities for leadership, as they have
stepped into positions as village leaders after village men have migrated out
of the area for work or due to the armed conflict.72
Part of the problem of understanding the Karen forms of egalitarian
democratic practice has been the difficulty of knowing what to call their
egalitarian practice. The anthropologist James Scott follows fellow social
scientist Edmund Leach in using the Kachin term gumlao to name the
highly flexible and changeable “leveling revolutions” of the social practices
of many Southeast Asian Indigenous communities, including the Karen.73
But once again, this problem is no simple matter of language translation.
Researchers have argued over the accuracy of Leach’s characterization of
the Kachin gumlao,74 but it is clear that the gumlao practices are difficult to
identify and study for both imperial administrators and social scientists
because of their changeability. A turn-of-the-century British colonial
administrator in Burma warned his colleagues that “each village claims to
be independent and only acknowledges its own chief ” but then also notes
that “each house owner, if he disagrees with his chief, can leave the village
and set up his … own sawbwa [chiefdom].”75 For modern anthropologists,
Karen societies are known to practice social structures that “can be both
disaggregated and reassembled,”76 to provide “a kind of practical
experience, or praxis, in several forms of social organization,”77 to “not so
much change identities as emphasize one aspect of a cultural and linguistic
portfolio that encompasses several potential identities.” This leads to
vagueness, plurality, and fungibility of identities and social units.”78 This
problem of selective emphasis in modern categories allows the Karen to
“dissimulate—to … produc[e] a simulacrum of chiefly authority without its
substance,”79 to shadow or “self-consciously contradic[t] the forms and
values of their more state-like neighbors.”80 In this bewildering array of
possible and/or multiple sociocultural forms and structures, it might be
understandable for social scientists to have trouble identifying the essential
or correct “true” social structure of groups such as the Karen subgroup, the
Kachin.
It is not helpful to term this highly decentralized and fluid social practice
a “structure” in the traditional sense of a stable social arrangement with
clear lines of authority and order.81 The British colonial administrators
demeaned these communities as “wild” or “raw” in contrast to those the
colonizer found more “tame” or “cooked,” and Scott resorts to calling this
social practice “anarchic” and even like a “jellyfish”82 in an attempt to help
his readers imagine what such social relations would be like. At another
point, when rendering gumlao into English, Scott turns to the term
“acephalous,” meaning headless, inviting the reader to imagine that which
is hard for modern citizens to imagine: a society without a head or chief.83
By using a negative descriptor, Scott implicitly reinstalls the norm for
human beings, the human with head, while implying that the Karen and
Kachin (and numerous other Southeast Asian groups) practice some
inhuman and monstrous form of social relations.
What does it mean to call these gumlao communities “democratic”?
When the British begin to domesticate the Chin, one of the other gumlao
groups in the area now known as Burma or Myanmar, they have to “set
about creating a chief ” in the “democratic” Chin area.84 The British are able
to install democracy that fits their own understanding of democracy only by
inventing a figure they can rely on to produce the centralized vertical order
and inequality that democracy means to them: the Chin chief who rules
over the village. This history of invention is a warning to those of us who
look for “representative” figures of Indigenous communities and assume
that they may be found in “head” figures, at the top of the seemingly natural
vertical structure, which is also an invented history.
The possible overlap between anarchic communities and democratic
community suggests that egalitarian communities are beyond the pale not
only of modern social order but also of the modern vocabulary for naming
any structure that does not produce hierarchy. While the Karen (or Kachin)
gumlao villages seem to be self-governing and somewhat fluid in social
relations without the rigid hierarchies of the modern state, they differ
significantly from other Others of the modern European state: the anarchist
communities of the seventeenth-century English Levellers, or the Paris
Commune, or the Spanish anarchist trade unions of the 1910s and 1920s.
How can we avoid assimilating the Karen into these enemies of the modern
private property regime and the capitalist state, lumping them together with
all those that do not have the social “order,” that object so desired by most
social scientists and by others who benefit from the hierarchies of the
modern state?
It is in these incomplete efforts to name that which is beyond the
imagination of many under the spell of the modern state, haunted by its
ghosts and its enemies, that we may recognize the presence of what we
might call radical difference: the absolute Other of the modern. Language
does not fail us completely here, though the languages of the many
colonizers at work here (British, American, Japanese, Chinese, Burmese,
Thai) may not be adequate to capture the singular, nongeneralizable specific
history and significance of the headless, anarchic, vague, fungible,
dissimulating simulacrum or jellyfish known to Leach as gumlao and to the
Karen as their normal social and political practice. So, we may invent terms
for such Others of the modern state, as Scott did when he turned to the
nonhuman, the stinging denizen of the deep. But if we name this practice
with some newly coined term, we will be charged with elitist wordplay and
obfuscation that is not comprehensible to ordinary people. If we dare call
this unidentifiable conundrum “democratic” or “egalitarian,” we can only
do so at the risk of misnaming and appropriating, domesticating and
colonizing.

Haudenosaunee or Longhouse Confederacy

As in Southeast Asia, we find a surprising number of North American

Indigenous communities that practice collective action based on widely
distributed participatory decisions in the present day: the Huron,
Chickasaw, Pawnee, Apache, and also the Okanaga encountered in the
Introduction.85 Here we turn to the Iroquois, a central Other for a paragon of
modern liberal democracy, the United States. Perhaps the best known of the
terms for democracy that come from languages outside of the European
sphere is what is known in English as the Longhouse tradition of the
Haudenosaunee or Iroquois Federation. Given the importance of the
relationship between the Haudenosaunee and the British, French, U.S., and
Canadian governments for the federation model used by the United States,86
this model for democracy is relatively well known. The Long-house is the
place of assembly for the Haudenosaunee, where regular meetings are held
and decisions made by the community, an important site for egalitarian
democratic practice.
The Haudenosaunee or Longhouse Confederacy, sometimes known as the
Iroquois Confederacy, is a multinational confederacy that was in existence
long before contact with the Europeans.87 In this sense, the Iroquois have
performed, and continue to perform, democracy and nationhood in terms
that do not derive from the European democratic heritage enforced in many
parts of the world, even while they have been forced to interact with
European settler states in multiple ways. Whether making treaty agreements
as equals with the Dutch in 161388 or with the United States even before the
1776 armed struggle with the English began,89 the Iroquois have acted in
ways that both diverge from and conform to the European model of the
modern nation state. Yet, Iroquois success at governing a confederacy of
several Indigenous nations proved so successful in the eyes of those who
would found the United States that they took the Iroquois Confederacy as a
model for their multistate federation.90 Within this history, it is difficult to
tell who is the norm and who is the Other, who modeled what for whom. As
an important norm for democracy, listening to Iroquois views on democracy
asks us to reconsider equality in practice.
Despite abstract claims to equality by modern democratic states, since the
eighteenth century many democratic nation states that are settler colonies
have attempted to displace and erase Indigenous communities. Historically
speaking, then, “genocide is not a mistake or aberration of U.S. democracy;
it is foundational to it.”91 In North America, the meaning of democracy has
been summarized as: “From the perspective of American Indians,
‘democracy’ has been wielded with impunity as the first and most virulent
weapon of mass destruction.”92
The specific sites where Haudenosaunee democratic practice may be
found are located in multiple territories scattered all over what is known in
settler nationalist terms as the northeastern United States and southeastern
Canada. Each of these traditional territories together makes up one of the
Six Nations Confederacy known as the People of the Longhouse or the
Haudenosaunee: the Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Onondagas, the Cayugas,
the Senecas, and the more recently joined Tuscaroras. Take, for example,
the 12,000 acres known as the Kahnawake Indian Reserve in what is now
known as the francophone Canadian province of Quebec, surrounded by the
three largely white, francophone communities of St Constant, Delson, and
Châteauguay, about ten minutes outside of the metropolitan city of
Montreal. The people of this territory join with the people of two other
reserves in Quebec, Akwesasne and Kanehsatake, some living on the
reserve and others off the reserve, to make up the Mohawk now residing in
Canada, and they, together with other Mohawk in the United States, make
up the nation known as the Mohawk. The Kahnawakero:non or People of
Kahnawake “draw from the Confederacy of the past to recreate alternative
forms of religion and government in the contemporary era (this structure is
known today in the community as ‘the Longhouse’).” These alternative
forms compete with the band, so that “the Kahnawake behave as other
nations do and attempt, at every turn, to exercise authority and control over
the affairs of the reserve.”93
As we saw with the Aymara and the Karen, the Mohawk practice of the
Longhouse form of democracy is carried out in a complex, overlapping, and
often contradictory set of communities, force relations, traditions, and
histories.94 These force relations include Longhouse teachings, ancestral
practices and their contemporary articulations, neocolonial relations with
the Canadian and U.S. settler states, and day-to-day negotiations across
multiple noncontiguous territories, multiple categories of intracommunity
social differences, and multiple levels of tension between the ancestral
Longhouse governance system and the band council system.95 In the
Canadian setting, where the land itself is held in trust for the community by
the European settler state96 and where the community did not have control
over its own membership until 1985,97 we might imagine that the
Indigenous political practices seem precarious. Yet, this community in
multiple iterations has proven to be very strong in its fealty to tradition,
which also responds to the complexities of contemporary politics.
The present-day practice of the Longhouse tradition carries out a
complex intersectional point of overlapping practices. The band council
forms of governance (e.g., the Mohawk Council of Kahnawà:ke) that
depend on the 1876 Indian Act for their legitimacy do not always align
cleanly with what Audra Simpson has called grounded intracommunity
forms of kin authority and interpretive frameworks. Simpson has pointed
out that governance practices in this complex setting do not require either
the settler state or even the band council to constitute “a nation-like
polity.”98 Rather than calling on some mythical, homogenized, and unified
entity known as “tradition”99 as the alternative to colonial forms of
government carried out by Indigenous communities, Simpson instead asks
her readers to consider multiple institutional alternatives and
counterdiscourses in their contested, historically specific forms.100 Through
these different, competing institutions and discourses, equality in practice is
beset by rival forms installed by the settler state in carrying out the daily
business of governing their affairs.
Iroquois equality is seen in making major decisions, such as the selection
of leaders, where there are two aspects to egalitarian decision-making. The
first is that these decisions are made by consensus, so that if there is
disagreement, the selection will not be successful. This consensus operates
in multiple layers to enforce the broad interests of the community over and
against the narrow interests of individuals and small community sectors.
Consensus must first be sought for the decision by the clan, and if there is
no agreement, then another proposal or individual (in the case of choosing a
leader) must be found. The Chief ’s council also makes its decision by
consensus, so if there are any who disagree, the proposal or individual will
not succeed and must be reconsidered. Ultimately, after the council have
made a decision, they turn to all present, to the people, and they ask
whether there is any reason not to proceed as agreed. At that point, the
people have the final word. As the elder Oren Lyons has said, “[T]he final
word is the people. That is democracy in its full form.”101 The emphasis
here is not on the representative character of the council, but on the
presence of men and women in the chamber where the decision is made,
who can speak directly to the body and object or not speak to agree with the
decision. This form of assembly and direct involvement of every adult
present is what Lyons indicates is “full” democracy, where the people have
their own voice without inequality between council members and those who
hold no office or title.
When we inquire into the gender equity of current Kahnawake practices,
following the directives of the Peacemaker’s call for “equity for the people”
(Great Law of Peace, second principle),102 we find that women today may
still need to be “reinstat[ed] … to their rightful, presumably traditional
place in governance” beyond already existing state and postcolonial band
council juridical forms.103 Women have power in the Longhouse practices,
not only in gendered leadership offices (clan mother and female faith
keeper), but also in “the duty to choose all the leaders” and the duties to
observe all the discussions, keep all the records, and teach the children. This
is why tradition tells of how Connastega told the people of the Continental
Congressional Delegation in 1774, as the Confederation concluded their
first treaty with the newly emerging nation before the independence war
announcement: “You shall know your nation through the women. They will
be carrying the line …. Because the earth is female, they will be working
with the earth. The earth will belong to them.”104 The gendering of the
nation in the Longhouse tradition suggests a logic of community and
belonging that diverges significantly from the modern European logic of
nation and earth. The power of Kahnawake women in the management of
community affairs was also demonstrated in the Oka confrontations of
1990105 and the Idle No More Movement that emerged in 2012.106
This group basis for equality, what Vera Palmer has called “agency
across genders,”107 challenges the liberal humanist fetishizing of individual
rights that has not only proven compatible with land theft, slavery,
capitalism, and imperialism but also troubles the views of those feminists
who associate equality with equal rights. Can divided gender roles produce
equality? Is a democratic practice built on gender distinctions an egalitarian
practice? If we assume that political power must be distributed according to
a modern European calculus of universalized, homogenized individualism
through rights, civil liberties, and voting, then these gender divisions will
not be acceptable as egalitarian.
In other ways, Iroquois Longhouse practices map poorly onto the grid of
legibility enforced by modern, Eurocentric terms, institutions, and practices.
For example, the nation state claims land as territory on which the state
believes it has sovereignty as the basis for its very existence as a democratic
entity. The basis for these claims is complex and often not made explicitly,
but resides in property law, the imagined and enforced existence of national
borders, and ultimately such beliefs as the Doctrine of Discovery. Yet, for
the Longhouse tradition, land cannot be privately owned and, indeed, is an
important sacred force.108 It is difficult under the terms of modern
secularism to make sense of this spirituality, yet consistently across multiple
Indigenous groups land is seen as a spiritual entity with whom the
community engages in its everyday practices.109 For this reason, some
democratic communities recognize ecosystems or particular land features as
bearing rights that can be pursued in courts, as in the case of the Maori of
New Zealand and the Ecuadorean constitution,110 and others have
representatives that speak for the land, as we saw in the Introduction. This
living entity provides a ground for the democratic community, but it
disappears when we appropriate Indigenous democracy into the modern
state’s conception of democracy as governing national territory or
commodified private property. Implicit in this misfit is the refusal of
practices of objectification and commodification that are central to modern
electoral democracy at the state level.
Difference for the Haudenosaunee is shaped by multiple, overlapping
forces that pull and push each town, each Longhouse, each band council,
and each individual in contradictory and conflicting ways. While the
Indigenous nations that make up the Iroquois Confederacy may seem
discrete, they often live together and have children together, producing
multiple loyalties that are overlaid onto the dual obligations they have to
their Indigenous nation and their European settler nation. The boundaries of
the Mohawk and other members of the confederacy also bridge the national
boundaries of Canada and the United States, a bridge that has led to many
overt conflicts and struggles in addition to internal struggles within specific
communities and individuals. Competing modes of Indigenous governance
present in the band councils installed by the postcolonial state, the system
of chiefs installed by the state, and the Longhouse traditions also overlap
and compete for community consensus and identifications. Overlapping
systems of land and resource management governed by the Indigenous
nations and the European settler nations compete for control of material
goods and for determination of the different technologies, social sharing,
and spiritual practices at work in harvesting, hunting, processing, and
consuming the fruits of the land, water, and air. There is much more to
difference for the Iroquois.

Zapatistas

The Zapatista movement, which became publicly known in 1994, is perhaps

the single best-known model of equality in practice to be discussed in this
book. Yet, comparable equalizing practices are also found in other
communities in urban Mexico,111 in rural Mayan communities nearby in
Guatemala,112 and among the powerful Lenca of Honduras,113 among many
others. Egalitarian democratic practices did not emerge spontaneously in
southern Mexico as a result of some surprising survival of pure Indigenous
culture or social practice. The history of struggle in Chiapas, the
southernmost state of Mexico, in the surrounding areas of Guatemala and in
other Mexican states, in distant regions of Mexico, and in North America,
together with global economic changes, produced a very specific form of
democratic practice that has achieved success for over a decade.
The Indigenous in Chiapas have provided migratory labor, first for the
farms and transportation needs of Spaniards and then for their mixed-race
mestizo successors, self-styled ladinos of mixed Indian and Spanish descent
around the colonial capital of San Cristóbal de Las Casas. Migrant labor
became official state policy in the 1890s (before it did in South Africa), and
was used in that decade by the ladinos to build the first roads. The
Indigenous were compelled by 1893 legislation to divide up what
communally managed lands they still possessed into individually owned
private property, much as the Indigenous were forced to do in the 1887
Dawes Act in the United States. Many passed from subsistence farming into
debt peonage as a result.114
The Mexican Revolution ultimately reestablished, among other rights,
the structure of communal land management, known in Spanish as ejidos, in
Article 27 of the 1917 constitution. But neither the constitution nor the Plan
de Ayala of Emiliano Zapata’s movement explicitly mentioned the
Indigenous (as indígenas or indios), much less directly benefitted them,115
just as the 1980s land reform in Guatemala did not reach rural Indigenous
communities.116 Some Indigenous ejidos were established after the
emergence of a socialist Confederation of Workers from across Chiapas as
part of agrarian reform, and with the global depression and political crises
of Mexico in the 1930s, President Lázaro Cárdenas distributed more ejidos
to villages, as did his appointed governor in Chiapas after 1936.117 Resident
peon workers began to collectively gain the courage to incorporate as ejido
communities, with nearly 150 established by 1950, though they soon turned
into communities ruled by local bosses, or caciques.118 Through the national
economic boom of the 1960s and the financial crisis of 1982, the heavily
Indigenous southern states of Guerrero, Oaxaca, and Chiapas have
prospered the least, with Chiapas becoming “the most agricultural, least
electrified, least schooled, least literate, and poorest” of the poorest states.
Officially half of the population in 1994 was malnourished. Almost 60
percent of the people who work in the state lived on less than the nationally
defined minimum wage. And the central highlands, Los Altos, the cañadas
or canyon region, and the Lacandón jungle were the areas worst off. Forty
percent had no schooling. Fifty-six percent were unable to read or write.
Two-thirds of dirt-floor homes had no electricity, drinking water, or
sanitation. Nine-tenths made only enough for their families to eat: corn,
salt, beans, and greens.119
The struggles in the northern, eastern, and southern areas of the state to
establish collective communities provided a way for landless rural laborers
to find grantable land, occupy it, secure the perimeter, declare a community,
and fight for recognition, then hold the land as a joint trust. By the 1950s
and 1960s, population pressures in these areas forced many youth in their
twenties and thirties to do what their ancestors had done for generations:
migrate, this time to unpopulated federal borderlands to the east, where the
agrarian reform offices promised ejidos struggle-free in the area that
became known as the jungle, the forest, the Lacandón. Some of these
communities were settled by people from the same village or who spoke the
same language, while others mixed Catholics and Protestants or were
multilingual, speaking Chol, Tzotzil, Tzeltal, or Tojolabal together.120 These
communities in the Lacandón jungle were to become very important for the
Zapatistas, as they established new forms of egalitarian community
governance well before the Zapatista uprising of 1994 and their
autonomous governance of the early twenty-first century.121
These villages in the region around San Cristóbal had their customary
local self-government practices up into the 1950s: occasional assemblies for
dispute resolutions, public (but not official) communal duties (known as
cargos), and ancestral cooperatives. Many of these ejido communities of the
1950s and 1960s Lacandón agreed to avoid the old community ranks of
honor and establish a new kind of politics, deliberating and deciding on
concerns

in common, in frequent, regular assemblies that were open meetings

ordinarily attended by all local men and women over 16 … the
assembly would discuss issues through every disagreement, discuss the
hard ones to death, sometimes over many meetings, and not until then,
when all were satisfied, vote its “accord.” In the worst case, if a
 decision was urgent but held up because of opposition, the opposition
would have to leave the community so that the assembly could then
vote an accord.122

Inequality remained in multiple ways in these early Lacandón

communities before the Zapatista movement began. Each community
member had communal duties that distinguished some members more than
others. Community commissioners carried out some of these duties, but
others were done by volunteers, men and women; together, they all learned
something about everything in common, and also “learned their value to
each other…. This made for numerous leaders and guaranteed that no
special group could accumulate authority over the assembly.”123 The early
Lacandón communities also combined their assembly practices with elected
leadership practices, with elections taking place by consensus and not by
vote. More importantly, the elected authorities did not give orders, but
received their instructions from the community assembly decisions.124
Many commentators have argued that starting in the 1970s,125 a new
collaboration took place in some selected regions between church-based
activists, including mixed-race activists and others from outside the region
and Indigenous activists, Indigenous Mayan community members, and
secular, often Marxist or Maoist, organizers, sometimes from outside the
region. Working often in small discussion groups of six to eight people and
using a representative process, these groups adopted the “Maya
communities’ notions that no one person should be above any other, the
church’s goal of empowering all members of a community and the secular
organizer’s belief in political mobilization—all translated into a working, if
cumbersome democracy.”126 Many independent peasant organizations
emerged as a result in the 1970s and 1980s, linking class and workplace
demands to issues of ethnicity and race, colonization and resistance.127
Through this work across racial, gender, class, regional, and postcolonial
divisions emerged a new social model for community governance.
Together, these efforts contributed to a new frame of mind among the
Indigenous, strengthening their already existing capacities to question
received beliefs and conventional practice and their willingness to
collectively organize to act on a new sense of right and wrong, justice and
injustice.128
 Other organizers from Mexico City and other states were also active in
the rural highlands of Chiapas. After losing control of an ejido organization,
the Union of Ejido Unions, the current Bishop, Samuel Ruiz, turned in the
early 1980s to some new social workers in the region as allies. These social
workers, unknown to the Bishop’s missionaries, were members of a Che
Guevara-inspired clandestine movement, the Forces of National Liberation
or FLN.129 Their operatives worked underground to identify interested
Indigenous, arm themselves, revitalize the Union of Ejido Unions, and build
the movement that would come into public awareness in a decade as the
Zapatista movement.
The Mexican elected government made its intentions crystal clear to the
Indigenous in the 1970s and 1980s. The federal government intervened in
the Lacandón region in 1972 to give party politicians a racket for mahogany
and cedar logging profits and displace many ejido communities, and the
resulting conflict lasted into the late 1980s. In 1978, the federal government
intervened again to establish an ecological biosphere reserve, and more
conflict resulted. Some communities aligned with the political parties, and
others began to defend themselves against party thugs and their local allies,
even arming themselves. Wars to the south in Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El
Salvador in the 1980s led to more Mexican government interventions, and
the collapse of coffee prices in 1989 forced many into poverty.130 After the
federal government began urging the Union of Ejido Unions and its
leadership towards production on their lands rather than territorial
expansion in the mid-1980s, the clerics soon parted ways with the FLN. In
November 1991, Mexican President Salinas made public his plan to reform
the constitutional article on communal ejido land and agrarian reform; the
reform was passed in the Mexican Congress in January 1992 and came into
effect in February, ending the hopes of landless youngsters hoping to claim
an ejido. Later in 1992, the Mexican debate on the North American Free
Trade Agreement (NAFTA) began, threatening to end price supports for the
half-million corn farmers in the state, many of them Indigenous, and
threatening to change the Mexican Constitution and open the ejidos to
private sale to outside investors. The end of subsistence farming and life as
it was known was at hand.131 After participating in several protests during
1992, the FLN began to prepare for armed struggle in early 1993. When the
U.S. Congress voted approval for NAFTA in November, 1993 to come into
effect on the first day of 1994, the moment for the armed uprising had
come.132
It was in this already politically fluid situation that the Zapatista
organizers first entered the Lacandón jungle in the mid-1980s, and from
their successes in building autonomous zones that practice a similar mixed
model of internal democratic practices has emerged the Zapatista
“autonomy” model that has been so influential.133 The Zapatista
development of their horizontal, rotating leadership and participatory
assembly process combines carefully selected principles with the Women’s
Law, which provides leverage for the community to advocate for women’s
participation and leadership. Most important from a democratic perspective
is the emphasis on accountability to the grassroots constituency enacted in
the principle of “leading by obeying” or mandar obedeciendo.134 This
principle is supplemented by leadership rotations and the workings of what
are known as “vigilance commissions,” which work in each subregion to
ensure that funds are spent as planned and to confirm the actual practices.135
After the uprising in 1994, the Zapatistas governed their own affairs both
under their military commanders and in collective communities. The
Zapatista communities rejected in lengthy discussions the 1994 national
government peace plan, among other reasons because it did not adequately
address questions of local democratic governance. These democracy
questions came to form the center of a subsequent National Democratic
Convention called in Aguascalientes by the Zapatista military, which
included not only local concerns in Chiapas but also the construction of a
new nation, a peaceful transition to democracy from the state of armed
conflict, and the need for a constitutional congress and a new Mexican
Constitution. In subsequent meetings and marches during 1994, the
Zapatista movement participants joined with others from a wide range of
social sectors, “linking participatory democracy with other issues
challenging the subordination of women, such as domestic violence.”136
Rather than seeing democracy as important only to the sphere of relations
with the nation state, the Zapatista movement also worked in this way to
establish equalizing practices, including full participation for women in
village life, the family and the home, and other social spheres.
The issues of racism, poverty, and the lack of state democracy in the
southern state of Chiapas came together in the mid-1990s in discussions and
congresses and conventions of Indigenous women with issues of rape,
especially rape by soldiers, and domestic violence.137 These discussions
even led to proposals at the first National Convention of Women in 1995 for
a transitional government for Mexico in which “women have the right to
propose, decide and to represent themselves.” Their public statement also
noted that

the government … will not be democratic if it does not include the

knowledge, ability, and sentiments of women. The government should
be a space for the reformation of politics which considers generic
democracy in all of the fields of public and private life.138

The importance of the Zapatista movement for democratic practices

beyond the state will not be known for some decades, but their use of a
loosely networked set of antisystemic sites has proven successful for
preserving democratic zones even when surrounded by a hostile nation state
using military and paramilitary force.139 Recent statements summarize their
approach to democracy: “Through resistance and rebellion, we create and
improve our laws and accords, always through assemblies in the
communities, always through democracy. That is to say, through the
thought and the voice of the people.”140 The loose networks communicate
actively to produce the accountability needed, as a recent official statement
suggests:

The people organize in assemblies, where they begin to express their

opinions and from there proposals emerge and these proposals are
studied for their advantages and disadvantages, to analyze which one is
best. And before making a decision, the proposals are taken back to the
people and the assembly for approval so that a decision can be made in
accordance with the majority of the communities.141

Accountability is created through the assemblies, which exist locally in

each community. Local, municipal, and regional authorities cannot do
anything without the local or municipal or regional assembly knowing
about it.142
One of the strengths of assembly-based practices is that they provide
tremendous creativity and even unpredictability in finding solutions and
developing strategies and tactics. As a recent statement notes,
 That … the people must be consulted … gives us time to invent things,
to create things, to imagine. We don’t have an instruction manual and
this is the truth. There is not a book for this. Our manual is evaluating
our work to see how to improve it … finding solutions for how to
better our own self-government.143

The Zapatista movement has proved to be very adaptable as a result,

transforming from an armed movement to a peaceful movement, and from a
military campaign to a collection of autonomous municipalities.
One of the clearest ways in which there is a misfit between the Greco-
European term “democracy” and the Zapatistas is captured eloquently in the
Zapatista name for national, state, and local electoral democratic practices:
“bad government.” The Zapatista vocabulary for their own alternative to
electoral democracy is readily comprehensible to its movement members:
“good government” (buen gobierno). By naming the governing councils
that carry out daily business between the meetings of the mass assemblies
the juntas de buen gobierno (JBG) or “Good Government Councils,” the
Zapatistas have imprinted this distinction deeply into the awareness of their
community residents and their visitors. So, the claims to democracy made
by the political parties active in the national, state, and local electoral
process are constantly confronted with the charge of “bad government” and
the Zapatista claim to practice “good government.”
The resulting instability in the meaning of “government,” divided
between “good” and “bad,” demands discussion of what is “good
government” and what constitutes democracy. This instability serves to
denaturalize “democracy” and reclaim it, rejecting the assumption that the
democracy of the modern state is the only possible form of political
practice. The autonomous communities of the movement, initially known as
Aguas Calientes, were renamed as the JBG or Councils of Good
Government. Naming itself is destabilized for the movement by the shifting
names of its best-known commander, a mestizo or light-skinned outsider
known as Subcomandante Marcos from 1994 until 2015, when he changed
his name to honor a fallen movement member killed by Mexican
paramilitary forces and became Subcomandante Galeano.
Countermeasures developed by the Zapatistas to ensure that they avoid
the problems they have observed in electoral democracies are multiple. One
is the education they have developed for their young people, boys and girls
alike, in their own schools. They have focused in these schools not only on
curricular content but also on training young people to shape their lives as
they see fit:

So for example, in democracy … we go about teaching [our kids] this,

so that they understand why their parents are in meetings. The teachers
say: “Okay kids, our festival is coming up” [and] says “and you
children, what are you going to do?” “Well we want to have a piñata or
we want to do a skit or a bit of theatre,” the kids start to say and they
consult with all the children about what they want to perform…. So the
kids start to learn how to organize themselves.144

Traditional notions of political difference for the Zapatistas are a constant

presence, as the residents for the autonomous communities live side by side
in small villages and rural settings with non-Zapatista movement residents.
The Mexican government counterinsurgency campaign means that cash is
constantly offered to non-Zapatistas for various perks, and the Zapatista
movement members must constantly consider how to live without the cash
that is readily available. Gender relations are a persistent theme in some
communities, as they work to improve the inequality that characterized the
pre-1994 communities with uneven success, using the Women’s Law as
leverage.145 The decision by the Zapatistas to have a woman, Comandanta
Esther, present their position to the Mexican National Congress in 2001 was
a surprising turn of events for those who assumed that “traditional”
Indigenous communities would not be able to fully fathom women’s
leadership. Racial and cultural nationalisms are also challenged by the
presence in the movement of members of multiple Indigenous communities
speaking mutually noncomprehensible languages living together in
communities and governing. Colonial divisions are rewritten through the
participation of mixed European and Indigenous mestizos, such as
Subcomandante Marcos, along with Indigenous members. Marcos is quite
explicit about his origins outside of the Indigenous communities of southern
Mexico in racial and other terms, identifying himself as “the only man with
light skin and a large nose” in various passages,146 or playfully through his
own adopted moniker, “big nose.” His presence in the movement rejects
essentialist notions of authenticity and biologically determinate conceptions
of identity, as also seen in the movement phrases “Todos somos Zapatistas”
or “We are all Zapatistas.”
Other differences supplement these identity-based struggles and
antagonisms in Zapatista communities, as the horizons for practice are
persistently narrowed into limits shaped by the locally active political and
intellectual forces. The Zapatista movement is well known for challenging
these limits in its own practice, a preference perhaps most clearly
articulated in one of the classic Zapatista sayings, “Walking while asking
questions.” This provides all in the movement with a leverage point for
questioning entrenched practices and asking about other possibilities. A
more playful interest in difference that explicitly challenges the divisions
inserted into practice through binary oppositions is found in a fable by the
long-time movement spokesperson, Subcomandante Marcos, named
“Always and Never:”

Once upon a time, there were two times: one was called One Time,
and the other was called Another Time. One Time and Another Time
made up the At Times family…. There were two ruling empires,
Always and Never, who for obvious reasons hated to death the At
Times family. They could never let One Time live in their kingdom,
because Always would then cease to be, since if it’s One Time now,
then it can’t be Always. Nor could they let Another Time show up
even once in their kingdom because Never cannot live with One
Time…. But time and again, One Time and Another Time bothered
Always and Never. And they kept it up until they were finally left in
peace….147

Marcos goes on to link this fable to the class and colonial relations shaping
their democratic movement in a moral: “Moral 3: The ‘always’ and ‘never’
are imposed from above. But below, time and again, you find ‘nuisances,’
which at times is another way of saying ‘different,’ or from time to time
‘rebels.’ ”148
This approach to the impossible limits on practice inserted by dualistic
divisions has helped to promote the flexibility of the governance practices
in responding to their community assemblies, and ultimately helped the
movement survive under constant siege from the modern electoral state.
Conclusion

Indigenous democratic practices diverge significantly from each other and

provide multiple frames for democracy that differ from the practices of
representative democracies of modern states. Rather than taking the
universal norm for democracy installed by liberal nation states, they provide
us with a sense of democracy with a differance. Yet, the democratic
practices reviewed in this chapter also question several foundational
assumptions that many make about the terms under which democracy with
a differance might be understood.
Democracy in its modern liberal sense does not begin to capture the
multiple governance practices we have examined from Indigenous
communities, nor does the modern English term “equality.” If democracy
means the Athenian and modern European-derived practice of preserving
specific modes of access for elites to decision-making sites, often
electorally representative elites—what we called democratic aristocracies in
the introduction—then the practices we have examined are not
democracies. We can see that the Zapatista commitment to widely rotating
membership in the Councils of Good Government works to disrupt the
well-known but rarely systematically disrupted weaknesses of many
electoral systems to privileged access by small groups: nepotism, oligarchy,
plutocracy, wealth inequalities. The list of these well-known weaknesses is
a long one. Yet, little is done to disrupt the problem systematically, beyond
weak electoral mechanisms. Electoral democracies have tried to restrict the
known weaknesses through term limits, revolving door limits between
government and private industry, citizen initiatives, funding limits with
plenty of loopholes for the wealthy, and other mechanisms, some of which
are violated with impunity by interested parties.
If equality means the abstract claim to equal rights and equal access to
civil liberties, without guarantees or with only weak forms of accountability
if these rights and access are not provided in practice, then these
communities are not equal. The Iroquois mechanism of giving
representative positions to men but giving women other modes of access to
power through the selection and removal of representatives is patently
unequal in the modern, individualist model of equality. Indeed, this model
of differential access to power might even be seen as discrimination under
individualist assumptions that all must have the same access to rights. The
basis for equality in the Aymara communities is not individual rights, but
participation in ayllu structures coordinated by work duties distributed
across dual complementarity based on balances across pairs (such as
feminine–masculine or up–down). The Aymara practices introduce a logic
into democratic equality that requires balance and rejects the imbalances
seen in many forms of inequality.
As we saw in the Introduction, in Okanagan governance practices some
community members represent groups of humans, but others represent
nonhuman entities, such as the water or the land. Others represent children,
or mothers, or elders, or medicine people. Would this practice be
disqualified because some community members do not receive the same
representation? Why have the Okanagans chosen for specific representation
precisely those who do not always speak up as much as members of other
groups, such as children rather than adults, or elders, or mothers rather than
fathers, or those who heal rather than injure and kill? This is an
institutionalized form of redress that goes well beyond the affirmative
action mechanisms in many electoral democracies. It addresses multiple
differences, rather than operating on the homogenizing logic of sameness as
the one and only measure of equality.
Even the universalist, individualized modern category of human is
troubled by the Okanagan practice, since future impacts are always
represented:149 is the future worthy of representation, even if it involves
those who are not alive today? This specific way in which the Okanagans
reject the logic of the present to invoke a longer-term horizon for decision-
making can be seen as democratic only if separation is possible from the
senatorial voice of the elected as a living adult, the logic of Greco-European
electoral democracy as the only possible, practical, viable, and real form of
democracy. If equality means the abstract claims to the regimes of equal
rights or equal opportunities under so-called free-market economies,
without any accountability when these claims consistently fail to
materialize, then these communities would not be seen as equal. If equality
means participating with many of your community members in developing
proposals together and decision-making about community affairs, then they
would.
We can also see that gender and other identity-based forms of inequality
remain a significant problem in the Zapatista and particularly the Karen
communities. While the Zapatistas have become widely known for their
efforts to strengthen women’s participation, recent reports discussed above
indicate that there is still much work to be done in those communities.
However, the mechanisms for introducing gender difference into equality in
practice in the Long-house and Aymara traditions present important ways to
put democracy with a difference into practice. While declining to
appropriate themselves under the individualist universalism of the modern
European notions of equality, both these communities have important
suggestions to make about how to produce equality across established
social differences.
Zapatista equality is based in the assembly, just as it is in the Aymara
communities. Taking participation in the assembly or Longhouse council as
the basis for equality directs democracy to be enacted through embodied
performance. This makes the abstractions, objectifications, and alienations
of modern liberal democracy difficult, since the political body is present
physically, is visible, and can speak back to proposals that do not meet its
approval.
Democracy in Indigenous practice is clearly grounded in the land, but not
as sovereign territory. Rather, we saw in the Iroquois case that the land is a
living, spiritual being that demands accountability from its human
inhabitants, an assumption that secular European liberalism has shown
difficulty in capturing. We will see in the chapters to come that the
persistent presence of differences from modern secularism troubles the
appropriation of equalizing practices into the secularized universal category
of democracy.
The bounds of each community are more unstable than the term
“Indigenous” suggests. This is seen most clearly in the Aymara case, where
identification with the Indigenous heritage is constantly interrupted and
challenged by the presence of colonial governance institutions, such as the
church, and of Indigenous individuals who have committed themselves to
capitalism, the electoral state, and other powerful institutions and practices
in the region. Assumptions that indigeneity is a racial category are
questioned by the presence of the mestizo Marcos in a very visible place in
the movement. The Karen habit of picking up and moving to other
community sites and persistent willingness to reshape the limits of the
community is perhaps the strongest instance of an unstable, changeable
limit to an Indigenous community. Even the most local units for thinking
about democracy, such as “village” or tribe, are challenged, even becoming
something of a metaphysical question and recognized as “an artifact of the
imperial imagination.” These specific practices may serve as a type of
warning that the term “Indigenous” may not mean what it seems to mean
when it often serves as the Other to the modern state.
Cultural nationalisms are a problem that has been negotiated
successfully, if not resolved, in the Iroquois Confederacy and the Zapatista
movement, both of which bring several different cultural and language
groups together into a movement. By producing a political body that brings
other nations together, they challenge the principle of separation, the threat
of hostilities between nations that is implicit in the territorial boundary, a
division that is always unstable and a possible site of conflict. In this way,
the Iroquois and Zapatista unions reshape the meaning of the limit to the
political body in different ways than do the Aymara and the mestizo
presence in the Zapatistas.
Democracy in all four of our specific sites in this chapter has certainly
engaged with the modern state, but the state is clearly not at its center. As
Indigenous communities, all four existed long before the modern state came
into existence, though in different forms from those of the twentieth and
twenty-first centuries. The Iroquois and the Zapatistas have been involved
over their histories in armed struggle against the state, as have the other two
communities. The Aymara as described here are intent on changing state
policies, though less so in other settings and times. The Zapatistas began
with an attempt to wrest from the state a peace accord that transformed the
Mexican constitution, and changed their goals to autonomy when that effort
did not succeed.
Difficulties certainly remain. The brief sketches above left us with some
difficult problems of interpretation: What really is an ayllu? How do we
model equality in practice on a jellyfish? How does a political body survive
when it may reconstitute itself at any time, as in Karen practices? Naming
continues to be a problem, with some of the most troubling sites found in
the naming of the Karen by their Others and in the self-naming by the
Indigenous of the Zapatista movement, who have named themselves with
reference to a non-Indigenous peasant rebel.
In the end, equality comes down to the presence of men and women in
the council or assembly where the decision is made, where every adult
present may practice direct participation. This is what Onondaga Chief
Oren Lyons indicates is “full” democracy, where there is comparable status
for those who hold no office or title and for those who are elected council
members. Would such “full” democracy be possible or imaginable in the
modern electoral state?

Notes
1 Rather than conflating the Indigenous with the subaltern, I treat them separately in this chapter
and Chapter 3 to allow the class differences discussed in Chapter 3 to interrupt the appropriation
and universalization of the category of Indigenous. This will allow class differences to interrupt
that reductive assumption that the Indigenous are always already in resistance to the colonizer,
and always already identified with forms of ethnonationalism, with identitarian autobiography,
and as an object for anthropological discovery of the Other: María Josefina Saldaña-Portillo,
The Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas and the Age of Development (Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 2003), 160–1 and 170–1.
2 Discussions of the risk of appropriation when considering Indigenous cultures suggest that it
requires caution, learning from below, patience, long periods of time, and a careful training of
the imagination. See, for example, Robinder Kaur Sehdev, “Lessons from the Bridge: On the
Possibilities of Anti-Racist Feminist Alliances in Indigenous Spaces,” in This Is an Honour
Song: Twenty Years since the Blockades, ed. Leanne Simpson and Kiera Ladner (Winnipeg, MB:
Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 2010), 109–11; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Righting Wrongs –
2002: Accessing Democracy among the Aboriginals,” in Other Asias (Malden, MA: Blackwell
Publishing, 2008), 199–207; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Death of a Discipline (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2003), 25–70; Joe Parker, “Questioning Appropriation: Agency and
Complicity in a Transnational Feminist Politics,” Journal of Feminist Scholarship 3 (Fall 2012):
10–16, www.jfsonline.org/issue3/articles/parker/.
3 There is much writing about Indigenous governance practices for the commons, which will be
the source of the discussions to come in this chapter and in the discussion of autonomy in
Chapter 4. For governance of the commons in Europe, see Peter Linebaugh, The Magna Carta
Manifesto: Liberties and Commons for All (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008);
Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990); and Oliver Rackham, The History of the
Countryside (London: J.M. Dent, 1986). For governance of the commons in other areas beyond
the Indigenous communities surveyed in this chapter, see, among other work, Nancy Lee Peluso
and Peter Vandergeest, “Genealogies of the Political: Forest and Customary Rights in Indonesia,
Malaysia, and Thailand,” Journal of Asian Studies 60, no. 1 (2001): 761–812, doi:
10.2307/2700109.
4 Gobierno Autónomo I: Cuaderno de texto de primer grado del curso de “La Libertad según l@s
Zapatistas,” n.p, n.d., 63–6; Harry Vanden, “Social Movements, Hegemony, and New Forms of
Resistance,” Latin American Perspectives 34, no. 2 (March 2007): 26, doi:
10.1177/0094582X06299082; Veronica Schild, “Recasting ‘Popular’ Movements: Gender and
Political Learning in Neighborhood Organizations in Chile,” Latin American Perspectives 21,
no. 2 (1994): 59–80, www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2633875.pdf; Elizabeth Jelin, “Toward a Culture
of Participation and Citizenship: Challenges for a More Equitable World,” in Cultures of
Politics, Politics of Cultures: Re-Visioning Latin American Social Movements, ed. Sonia
Alvarez, Evelina Dagnino, and Arturo Escobar (Boulder: Westview Press, 1998), 405–21.
5 Michael Löwy, “Just an Answer to John Holloway,” New Politics 9, no. 4 (Winter 2004): 142–3,
http://newpol.org/content/new-politics-vol-ix-no-4-whole-number-36, accessed 30 March, 2016.
 Smith, Andrea. “Native Studies at the Horizon of Death: Theorizing Ethnographic Entrapment
6 and Settler Self-Reflexivity,” in Theorizing Native Studies, ed. Audra Simpson and Andrea
Smith (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), 214.
7 Ibid., 220.
8 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Resistance That Cannot Be Recognized as Such.” In
Conversations with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ed. Swapan Chakravorty, Suzana Milevska,
and Tani E. Barlow (New York: Seagull Books, 2006), 57–86; Audra Simpson, Mohawk
Interruptus (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), 124–5.
9 Lotte Hughes, The No-Nonsense Guide to Indigenous Peoples (Toronto: Between the Lines,
2003), 20.
10 Joseph Cornell, “Slash and Burn.” Encyclopedia of the Earth, October 27, 2011.
www.eoearth.org/view/article/156045/. Accessed March 1, 2015.
11 Partha Chatterjee, “Democracy and Subaltern-Citizens in India,” in Subaltern Citizens and Their
Histories, ed. Gyanendra Pandey (London: Routledge, 2010), 193–208.
12 The debates over the term “Indigenous” are shaped by struggles between community members,
modern states, intergovernmental organizations (such as the International Labour Organization
(ILO) of the United Nations, the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples, and the World
Bank), nongovernmental organizations (e.g., Survival International, the International Working
Group on Indigenous Affairs), and dominant ethnic rival groups within national or regional
settings. Other terms developed by Indigenous peoples that are widely used include First
Peoples or First Nations, the Fourth World, Tribal Peoples, Aborigines, and other terms. None of
these terms have been met with universal acceptance; for example, some communities who do
not want to take the modern state as their model reject the term “First Nations.” On the other
hand, states often decline to use any of these terms for various reasons related to domestic
interests; a specific debate on the use of the term in Indonesia is found in “Indonesia Denies It
Has Any Indigenous Peoples,” Cultural Survival, October 1, 2012,
www.survivalinternational.org/news/8710, accessed October 3, 2012. Terms developed by
specific nations and international organizations, such as the United Nations and the ILO, include
Scheduled Tribes, Ethnic Minorities, and Indigenous Peoples. Each of these terms carries a
particular politics, such as the choice by the United Nations in its 2007 resolution, the United
Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), to use the term “peoples,”
since that category is often excluded from rights discussions that have legal force. Overviews of
some of the politics in these debates may be found in Hughes, No-Nonsense Guide, 11–20; Ken
Coates, A Global History of Indigenous People: Struggle and Survival (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2004), 1–15; and Tapan Bose, “Definition and Delimitation of Indigenous Peoples
of Asia,” International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, www.iwgia.org/human-rights/self-
determination, accessed November 27, 2015.
13 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Richard Philcox (New York: Grove Press,
2004), 146; Luis Villoro, “On Consensual Democracy: Concerning Kwasi Wiredu’s Ideas,”
Polylog: Forum for Intercultural Philosophy 2 (2000), http://them.polylog.org/2/fvl-en.htm,
accessed April 10, 2016; Kwasi Wiredu, “Democracy and Consensus in African Traditional
Politics: A Plea for a Non-Party Polity,” Polylog: Forum for Intercultural Philosophy 2 (2000),
http://them.polylog.org/2/fwk-en.htm, accessed April 10, 2016. I am indebted to René Carrasco
for bringing the Villoro article to my attention.
14 James Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 3.
15 Ibid., 7.
16 In addition to the highland areas of Southeast Asia at the center of the region known as Zomia,
Scott discusses such large regions as highland Latin America (outside the arable plateaus),
highland Africa both along the Mediterranean and in other regions, and the Balkans and
 Caucasus regions, as well as Amazonia and other river regions characterized by difficult access
(Scott, Not Being Governed, 8). Scott also emphasizes those regions in any modern state that
have proven to be a refuge for those who would refuse the internal colonization process that
invariably characterizes the modern state (Scott, Not Being Governed, 3).
17 Scott, Not Being Governed, 8–9; Ian James, The Fragmentary Demand: An Introduction to the
Philosophy of Jean- Luc Nancy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006).
18 Elizabeth Povinelli, Empire of Love: Toward a Theory of Intimacy, Genealogy, and Carnality
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 3–6.
19 Gladys Tzul Tzul, “Indigenous Communal Systems of Governments and Communal Lands in
Chuimeq’ena, Guatemala,” public presentation, December 7, 2015, Scripps College, Claremont,
California.
20 Ranu Samantrai, “Afterword: Justice without Truth?” in Interdisciplinarity and Social Justice,
ed. Joe Parker, Ranu Samantrai, and Mary Romero (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2010), 358–60.
21 Marcelo Fernández Osco, “Ayllu: Decolonial Critical Thinking and (An)Other Autonomy,” in
Indigenous Peoples and Autonomy: Insights for a Global Age, ed. Mario Blaser, Ravi de Costa,
Deborah McGregor, and William Coleman (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2010), 33–7.
22 Raquel Gutiérrez Agular, Rhythms of the Pachakuti: Indigenous Uprising and State Power in
Bolivia (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), 34.
23 Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (New York: Metropolitan
Books, 2007), 151.
24 Ibid., 142–54.
25 Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, The First New Chronicle and Good Government, trans. Roland
Hamilton (Austin: University of Texas Press), 2009.
26 Raúl Zibechi, Dispersing Power: Social Movements as Anti-State Forces, trans. Ramor Ryan
(Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2010), 46–7, 104.
27 Zibechi, Dispersing Power, 48–58; Gutiérrez Aguilar, Pachakuti, 3–72.
28 Juliana Ströbele-Gregor, “Culture and Political Practices of the Aymara and Quechua in Bolivia:
Autonomous Forms of Modernity in the Andes,” Latin American Perspectives 23, no. 2 (1996):
77–8.
29 Ibid.
30 Silvia Rivera Cusicanqu, “Luchas campesinas contemporáneas en Bolivia: El movimiento
‘katarista’: 1970–1980,” in Bolivia hoy, ed. René Zavaleta Mercado (México City: Siglo XXI,
1983); Zibechi, Dispersing Power, 103.
31 Gutiérrez Aguilar, Pachakuti, 38.
32 Ibid., 37–42.
33 Zibechi, Dispersing Power, 104.
34 Ibid., 105.
35 Zibechi, Dispersing Power, 105; Gutiérrez Aguilar, Pachakuti, 28–9.
36 Gutiérrez, Pachakuti, 28–32.
37 Ibid., 16.
38 Ibid., 6.
39 Ibid., 16–17.
40 Ibid., xxxiii–xxxiv, xxxvii.
41 Ibid., xli, 52–71, 149, 169.
42 Zibechi, Dispersing Power, 46–7; Raúl Zibechi, Territories in Resistance: A Cartography of
Latin American Social Movements, trans. Ramor Ryan (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2012), 294.
43 Gutiérrez Aguilar, Pachakuti, 23–4.
44 Ibid., 24–6.
45 Ibid., 26.
46 Raúl Zibechi, Dispersing Power, 25–6.
47 Fernández Osco, “Ayllu,” 30–4.
48 Zibechi, Dispersing Power, 91–100; Helene Risǿr, “Twenty Hanging Dolls and a Lynching:
Defacing Dangerousness and Enacting Citizenship in El Alto Bolivia” Public Culture 22, no. 3
(2010): 465–85.
49 Gutiérrez Aguilar, Pachakuti, 35.
50 Ibid., 34, 43–52.
51 Ibid., 144–51.
52 Scott, Not Being Governed, 166, 284, 407–12. Scott also speculates that other communities
share the gumlao structure beyond Southeast Asia, such as the Berbers of North Africa and the
Kalmyks of present-day Russia: Scott, Art, 32, 277–8. See Hugh Roberts, Berber Government:
The Kabyle Polity in Pre- Colonial Algeria (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2014). Gratitude to Fazia
Aitel for bringing this source to my attention.
53 Jane Richardson Hanks and Lucien Mason Hanks, Tribes of the North Thailand Frontier (New
Haven: Yale Southeast Asia Studies, 2001), 2; Victor B. Lieberman, Strange Parallels:
Southeast Asia in Global Context, c.800–1830, vol. 1, Integration on the Mainland (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2003), 134.
54 Lieberman, Strange Parallels, 203.
55 Ibid., 203–9.
56 Charles Keyes, Ethnic Adaptation and Identity: The Karen on the Thai Frontier (Philadelphia:
Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1979), 26–46.
57 Lieberman, Strange Parallels, 313, 333.
58 Hanks, North Thailand Frontier, 193.
59 Keyes, Thai Frontier, 45.
60 The epistemic politics of the term “Karen” and the related term “Kachin” are discussed in
Keyes, Karen, 3–23 and Scott, Not Being Governed, 211–16, 274, 384 n92, 93.
61 Keyes, Thai Frontier, 13–15.
62 Ibid., 17.
63 Ibid., 15–19.
64 Ibid., 17–18.
65 Scott, Not Being Governed, 269 n78, 386 n119.
66 Ibid., 218–19.
67 Ibid., 219.
68 Ibid., 269.
69 Ibid., 216.
70 Ibid., 7–9, 269.
71 Women’s League of Burma, “Long Way to Go: Continuing Violations of Human Rights and
Discrimination against Ethnic Women in Burma. CEDAW Shadow Report,” July 2016, 19, 44,
http://womenofburma.org/cedaw-shadow-report-long-way-to-go/.
72 “Hidden Strengths, Hidden Struggles: Women’s Testimonies from Southeast Myanmar,” Report
Briefer, July 2016 (covering January 2012 to July 2016), Karen Human Rights Group, accessed
September 5, 2016, http://khrg.org/2016/08/hidden-strengths-hidden-struggles-
women%E2%80%99s-testimonies-southeast-myanmar. Thanks are due to Jennifer Trejo for
referring me to this resource.
73 Scott, Not Being Governed, 216.
74 Ibid., 384 n93.
75 Ibid., 212.
76 Ibid., 211.
77 Ibid.
78 Ibid.
79 Ibid., 213.
80 Ibid., 216.
81 This problem runs through much social scientific study of Indigenous groups. On ways to avert
the undesirable outcomes of assuming fixed traditions, see Povinelli, Empire, 3–6.
82 Scott, Not Being Governed, 212.
83 Ibid.
84 Ibid.
85 Steven Muhlberger and Phil Paine, “Democracy’s Place in World History,” Journal of World
History 4, no. 1 (1993): 40–1, www.jstor.org.ccl.idm.oclc.org/stable/20078545.
86 Bruce Johansen, Forgotten Founders: How the American Indian Helped Shape Democracy
(Boston: Harvard Common Press, 1982); Donald A. Grinde and Bruce E. Johansen, “1996
Sauce for the Goose: Demand and Definitions for ‘Proof ’ Regarding the Iroquois and
Democracy,” William and Mary Quarterly 53, no. 3 (1996): 621–36, doi: 10.2307/2947208.
87 Daniel K. Richter, The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era
of European Colonization (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011),
http://uncpress.unc.edu/books/T-1259.html, accessed April 15, 2016; William Fenton, The Great
Law and the Longhouse, a Political History of the Iroquois Confederacy (Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1998).
88 Audra Simpson, “Paths toward a Mohawk Nation: Narratives of Citizenship and Nationhood in
Kahnawake,” in Political Theory and the Rights of Indigenous People, ed. Duncan Ivison, Paul
Patton, and Will Sanders (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 273 n13; Chief
Irving Powless Jr, “Two Row History,” http://honorthetworow.org/learn-more/history/, accessed
November 26, 2014.
89 Oren Lyons, “A Democracy Based on Peace,” in Original Instructions: Indigenous Teachings
for a Sustainable Future, ed. Melissa Nelson (Rochester, NY: Bear and Company, 2008), 59–63.
90 Johansen, Forgotten Founders; Donald Grinde, Jr., “Recent Debate Regarding the Multicultural
Roots of Democracy,” in Bruce Johansen, Debating Democracy: Native American Legacy of
Freedom (Santa Fe: Clear Light Publishers, 1998), 192–202.
91 Andrea Smith, “American Studies without America: Native Feminisms and the Nation-State,”
American Quarterly 60, no. 2 (June, 2008): 311, http://ccl.idm.oclc.org/login?
url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/223305487?accountid=10141, accessed April 15, 2014.
92 Sandy Grande, Red Pedagogy (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004), 31–2, quoted in Smith,
“American Studies,” 311.
93 Audra Simpson, Mohawk Interruptus, 126–7.
94 Audra Simpson’s argument against homogenizing the Mohawk or Iroquois “community” or
“tradition” follows Briggs (1996) and Brackette Williams in arguing that the deeply
essentializing homogenization of historical heterogeneity is produced through the multiple
apparatuses of the European state project of nation-building and colonization as they are
reinforced by anthropological epistemology in its disciplinary history and contemporary
practice: Simpson, “Paths,” 122, 271 n2, 272 n6; Brackette Williams, “A Class Act:
Anthropology and the Race to Nation across Ethnic Terrain,” Annual Review of Anthropology
18 (1989): 401–44, http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.18.1.401. As Indigenous
communities reproduce essentialist notions of identity and authenticity and attempt to enforce
homogenized practices, Simpson suggests they work to produce Indigenous “traditions” that
support colonial (and postcolonial) state presumptions to identity as well. For a fuller sense of
Simpson’s epistemology, see her approach to knowledge about Indigenous communities in “On
Ethnographic Refusal: Indigeneity, ‘Voice,’ and Colonial Citizenship,” Junctures 9 (2007): 67–
80, http://pages.ucsd.edu/~rfrank/class_web/ES-270/SimpsonJunctures9.pdf, and in Mohawk
Interruptus. An example of this refusal may be found in her work (Simpson, “Paths,” 134) and
in the work of others attempting to decolonize academic knowledge (Smith, “Horizon of
 Death,” 212–14, 220). Here I follow Simpson’s epistemological cautions without turning to the
troubled notion of “experience” as an anchor point for truth claims: Simpson, “Paths,” 125.
95 Simpson, “Paths,” 127, 271 n4.
96 Ibid., 126.
97 Ibid., 128.
98 Simpson, Mohawk Interruptus, 189.
99 Simpson, “Paths,” 122, 271 n2, 272 n6.
100 Ibid., 271, 272 n4.
101 Lyons, “Democracy,” 65.
102 Ibid., 63.
103 Simpson, “Paths,” 190.
104 Lyons, “Democracy,” 63.
105 Simpson, Mohawk Interruptus, 148–50.
106 Judy Rebick, “Idle No More: A Movement That Is Already Succeeding,” in The Winter We
Danced: Voices from the Past, the Future, and the Idle No More Movement, ed. Kino-nda-niimi
Collective (Winnipeg MB: ARP Press, 2014), 235–8.
107 Vera Palmer, “Devil in the Details: Controverting an American Indian Conversion Narrative,” in
Theorizing Native Studies, ed. Audra Simpson and Andrea Smith (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 2014), 289.
108 Leanne Simpson, “Looking After the Gdoo-naaganinaa: Precolonial Nishnaabeg Diplomatic and
Treaty Relationships,” Wicazo Sa Review 23, no. 2 (2008): 29–42; Sehdev, “Lessons,” 105–24.
109 Tara Williamson, “This Is a Ceremony,” in The Winter We Danced: Voices from the Past, the
Future, and the Idle No More Movement, ed. Kino-nda-niimi Collective (Winnipeg MB: ARP
Press, 2014), 379–85; Leo Killsback, “Native American Interventions and Resistance,” public
lecture, Scripps College, Claremont, California, April 29, 2016.
110 Robin Milam, “Rivers and Natural Ecosystems as Rights Bearing Subjects,”
http://therightsofnature.org/rivers-and-natural-ecosystems-as-rights-bearing-subjects/, accessed
November 3, 2016.
111 Enrique Reynoso, Organización Popular Francisco Villa de Izquierda Independiente, public
presentation, October 21, 2015, Pitzer College, Claremont, California.
112 Gladys Tzul Tzul, “Sistemas de gobierno comunal indígena: la organización de la reproducción
de la vida,” El Aplante 1, no. 1 (2015): 125–40.
113 ¿Qué es COPINH?, https://copinh.org/copinh/quienes-somos, accessed November 1, 2016.
114 John Womack Jr, Rebellion in Chiapas: An Historical Reader (New York: The New Press,
1999), 6–7.
115 Ibid., 7–8.
116 Irma Alicia Velásquez Nimatuj, “El impacto del racismo y la corrupción en la vida de los
pueblos indígenas de Guatemala,” public presentation, December 7, 2015, Scripps College,
Claremont, California.
117 Womack Jr, Rebellion, 8–9.
118 Ibid., 12–16.
119 Ibid., 10–11.
120 Ibid., 16–17.
121 Womack Jr, Rebellion, 18–19; Guillermo Bonfil Batalla, México Profundo: Reclaiming a
Civilization, 35–8; Brian Gollnick, Reinventing the Lacandón: Subaltern Representations in the
Rain Forest of Chiapas (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2008), 164–5.
122 Womack Jr, Rebellion, 18.
123 Ibid., 18–19.
124 Ibid.
125 Womack Jr., Rebellion, 48–51; Hilary Klein, Compañeras: Zapatista Women’s Stories (Oakland,
CA: Seven Stories Press, 2015), 51–60.
126 Lynn Stephen, “Gender and Grassroots Organizing: Lessons from Chiapas,” in Women’s
Participation in Mexican Political Life, ed. Victoria Rodríguez (Boulder, CO: Westview Press,
1998), 155.
127 Ibid., 151–3.
128 Womack Jr., Rebellion, 23; Stephen, “Gender and Grassroots,” 151.
129 Womack Jr., Rebellion, 35–6.
130 Ibid., 21–2.
131 Ibid., 22.
132 Ibid., 37–42.
133 Raúl Zibechi, “The Impact of Zapatismo in Latin America,” Antipode 36, no. 3 (2004): 392–9,
doi: 10.1111/j.1467–8330.2004.00417.x; Aracely Burguete Cal y Mayor, “The De Facto
Autonomous Process: New Jurisdictions and Parallel Governments in Rebellion,” in Mayan
Lives, Mayan Utopias: The Indigenous Peoples of Chiapas and the Zapatista Rebellion, ed. Jan
Rus, Rosalva Aída Hernández Castillo, and Shannon Mattiace (Lanham: Rowman and
Littlefield, 2003), 191–218; Kara Ann Zugman, “Zapatismo and Urban Political Practice,” Latin
American Perspectives 32, no. 4 (July 2005): 132–47, doi: 10.1177/0094582X05278138.
134 Richard Stahler-Sholk, “The Zapatista Social Movement: Innovation and Sustainability,”
Alternatives 35 (2010): 269–90, http://alt.sagepub.com/content/35/3/269.full.pdf+html 284.
135 Gobierno Autónomo I, 68.
136 Stephen, “Gender and Grassroots,” 159–61.
137 Stephen, “Gender and Grassroots,” 159.
138 Convención Nacional de Mujeres 1995, 1, quoted in Rosalva Aída Hernández Castillo, in
Dissident Women: Gender and Cultural Politics in Chiapas, ed. Shannon Speed, Rosalva Aída
Hernández Castillo, and Lynn M. Stephen (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006), 68.
139 Stahler-Sholk, “Sustainability,” 286; Arturo Escobar, “Actors, Networks, and New Knowledge
Producers,” in Cognitive Justice in a Global World: Prudent Knowledges for a Decent Life, ed.
Boaventura de Sousa Santos (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2007), 280–9.
140 Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés, “Resistance and Rebellion II,”
http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2015/06/08/resistance-and-rebellion-ii-words-of-
subcomandante-insurgente-moises-may-7–2015/, accessed June 15, 2015.
141 Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés, “On the Elections: Organize,”
http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2015/05/14/on-the-elections-organize/, accessed June 15,
2016.
142 Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés, “Resistance and Rebellion III,”
http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2015/06/12/resistance-and-rebellion-iii-subcomandante-
insurgente-moises/, accessed June 15, 2016.
143 Ibid.
144 Ibid.
145 Hilary Klein, Compañeras: Zapatista Women’s Stories (Oakland, CA: Seven Stories Press,
2015), 217–56.
146 Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, “Twelve Women in the Twelfth Year: The Moment of War,”
in Our Word Is Our Weapon: Selected Writings, ed. Juana Ponce de Leon (New York: Seven
Stories Press, 2001), 5.
147 Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, “The Tale of Always and Never,” in Our Word, 356.
148 Ibid.
149 Jeannette Armstrong, “An Okanagan Worldview of Society,” in Original Instructions:
Indigenous Teachings for a Sustainable Future (Rochester, NY: Bear and Company, 2008), 70–
1.
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Junctures 9 (2007): 67–80. http://pages.ucsd.edu/~rfrank/class_web/ES-
270/SimpsonJunctures9.pdf.
Simpson, Audra. Mohawk Interruptus. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014.
Simpson, Leanne. “Looking After the Gdoo-naaganinaa: Precolonial Nishnaabeg Diplomatic and
Treaty Relationships,” Wicazo Sa Review 23, no. 2 (2008): 29–42.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/wic.0.0001. Accessed February 1, 2016.
Smith, Andrea. “American Studies without America: Native Feminisms and the Nation-State.”
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url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/223305487?accountid=10141. Accessed April 15, 2014.
Smith, Andrea. “Native Studies at the Horizon of Death: Theorizing Ethnographic Entrapment and
Settler Self-Reflexivity.” In Theorizing Native Studies, edited by Audra Simpson and Andrea
Smith, 207–234. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. Death of a Discipline. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Resistance That Cannot Be Recognized as Such.” In Conversations
with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, edited by Swapan Chakravorty, Suzana Milevska, and Tani E.
Barlow, 57–86. New York: Seagull Books, 2006.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Righting Wrongs – 2002: Accessing Democracy among the
Aboriginals,” in Other Asias, 14–57. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008.
Stahler-Sholk, Richard. “The Zapatista Social Movement: Innovation and Sustainability.”
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3 Democracies from Below
Subaltern Equality in Practice

Introduction

An important Other to democracy are those who are blocked systematically

from democratic participation as shaped by public discussions, access to
elected leaders and equality under the law, voting, or other behaviors. We
will use the term “subaltern” to refer to one subgroup among many such
groups: those blocked because they lack sufficient wealth, education,
mobility, or other qualifications for participating in national electoral
democracies in the present day. These Others of liberal democracy come
into full participation after they form a collectivity to govern their own
affairs.
The term “subaltern” refers in casual conversation to subordinates, and
refers to members of any group subordinated to another group, such as
factory or office workers subordinated to supervisors or soldiers
subordinated to their officers.1 The typical people who might come to mind
in this chapter will be illiterate women of the global South, women
subordinated in so many ways that they are unable to participate effectively
in national and local democratic electoral governance. This example of the
subaltern comes from a stronger meaning that the term carries: those who
are blocked structurally both from participating in the affairs of the
democratic nation state and from doing well in capitalist economies and
societies.2 Many of those who live in subaltern spaces are illiterate or barely
literate and effectively unemployable in a market economy, or can never
find full employment for reasons of race or ethnicity, language barriers,
legal status, or other factors. In the persistent failure of democracy to
distribute the benefits of the modern state to all, focus on the subaltern
opens questions about the links between democracy and capitalism and how
political discussions might inquire into economic impacts of democracy.
Where do we find subalterns? Many members of subaltern groups live in
rural areas in the global South, so the term “subaltern” provides an opening
to think about democracy from a rural perspective3 rather than from the
urban and often middle-class perspective that tends to predominate in
democracy discussions. Statistically speaking, illiterate populations are
concentrated in nations with high inequality and large rural populations,
such as India, China, parts of South and West Asia, and Sub-Saharan
Africa. In some countries in the global South, the illiterate communities
range from 40 to 50 percent of the population.4 The subaltern, in this sense
of the term, makes up what for some may seem a surprisingly large portion
of the world population, somewhere between roughly 10 and 20 percent of
the 2015 global population of around 7.5 billion. The statistical numbers of
this group range in size, depending on how literacy and employability are
measured, from 800 million to 1.5 billion.5 Many of the subaltern are
smallholder farming families, owning less than one hectare or 2.5 acres of
land, and landless peasants6 who get by as tenant farmers, sharecroppers,
and other rural wage workers. Yet, the subaltern are also found in urban
areas in the global North and South, such as among the nonindustrial poor,
slums and squatter communities, and other neighborhoods.7
Subaltern communities are by no means uniform. Gender is central to
subaltern populations, of which women make up two-thirds.8 Membership
in subaltern communities is also linked to language politics and government
policies. In countries and regions where large percentages of the population
speak languages that are not the official languages of the nation, literacy
rates and employability decline rapidly. In some of these minority language
communities, illiteracy rates range even higher, from 70 percent to close to
90 percent.9 Taken together, about half of all subalterns are speakers of
these languages. We have already examined the democratic practices of the
Karen of Burma and Thailand and the Zapatistas of Mexico, who do not
speak the dominant languages of their countries; we will explore the
democratic practices of another such community, the Awadhi speakers of
India, later in this chapter.
Subaltern populations are often understood in terms of socioeconomic
class differences.10 An Italian factory worker under Mussolini, Antonio
Gramsci, developed the term to strengthen collaborations across the divide
separating urban wage workers from unpaid subsistence farmers. So,
looking at subaltern democracies can become a way to understand
democracy while thinking about differences in wages and wealth, the large
numbers of wage-driven and unpaid poor, and the 1 percent of the
wealthy.11 As global wealth inequality has increased under the past few
decades of neoliberal policies, the total numbers of people getting by
without being able to read or count at all, or with only basic reading and
numbers skills, are increasing in the global North as well. Global economic
policies have impacted the makeup of subaltern communities in other ways
as well. As mechanized farming and fishing pushes farmers off their land,
access to employment and subsistence declines,12 while the expansion of
large-scale industrial farming and land grabs by transnational corporations
for non-agricultural purposes expands the size of subaltern communities.13
This stronger meaning of people blocked from doing well in a literate,
wage-based world is how the term “subaltern” is used throughout this book.
As economic conditions have changed in the ways commonly
summarized as “globalization” or “financialization,” subaltern societies
have also been changing. Transnational organizations like the International
Monetary Fund (IMF ) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) have
targeted the poor as possible creditors and as potential customers.14 By
working to force the illiterate poor out of subsistence agriculture and into
market economies, these massive organizations hope to disassociate
workers from their means of production (farming, village artisans) so that
they will come to rely on the market for subsistence. This puts them into a
position where they can be coerced into exploitation. Few options remain
for these subaltern communities: as the workplace is increasing productivity
through mechanization and the digitized knowledge economy, rural
subalterns evicted from their farms by mechanized industrial agriculture,
and the urban poor, remain without a place of employment, and their
livelihood is threatened. So, they mobilize themselves to advocate for their
interests:15 what we will characterize as subaltern agency.
The financial policies and practices that have reshaped global economic
and political relations, a phenomenon sometimes known as globalization,
are often associated with what are called neoliberal policies. As discussed
in Chapter 1, these policies have benefitted wealthy global social and
economic elites and increased global inequality, often under the disguise of
promoting the “freedoms” that make them part of the liberal heritage. Much
of the discussion of these policies has emphasized the impacts of neoliberal
financialization on workers, but in this chapter we will look most closely at
those who live at the very edges and outside of market-based societies:
workers who live in subsistence economies or swidden hunting and
gathering economies and are not paid in wages or salaries, or workers who
earn some income from wage work but also draw for a significant portion
of their survival on other resources.16 By living largely outside the grasp of
capitalist market economies, subalterns provide important resources for
considering alternative economies and political practices to those supported
by such modern institutions as the nation state, market economies, mass
schooling, and the wage-and salary-based workplace.
Yet, subaltern communities are now being targeted for credit-baiting and
marketing by the IMF and the WTO.17 This targeting is gendered, though
the feminist response to these objectifications rejects “the ideological
appropriation … and requires and implements infrastructural change rather
than practicing cultural coercion in the name of feminism.”18 These
infrastructural changes are coming about through “non-Eurocentric ‘social
movements … seeking to turn globalization persistently towards the
subaltern front …, away from capital-ist ends, provid[ing], however
haphazardly, the goal of a loosely based ‘regional’ political agenda that
must [carry] … an analysis of exploitation.” Other largely urban popular
movements also resist state exclusion from the economics of basic needs.
As capitalist market practices such as neoliberal export crop production
invade areas where subsistence farming once predominated in India and
other countries, subalterns often find themselves forced out of self-
subsistence lifestyles. These lifestyles once protected them from labor
exploitation, but now they are being forced into lifestyle practices that leave
them without basic subsistence needs. To obtain basic needs, subalterns are
forced to negotiate with state administrative bureaucracies. As a result,
some movements focus on state policies, particularly at the local urban
level, to a stronger degree than other approaches to the subaltern living
under financial globalization.19
Members of these communities often are so impoverished and cut off
from national politics and market economics that they continue to
participate in the present day in social structures associated by some with
the premodern despite the presence of these practices today, such as the
shared commons economy, collective labor, or the economics of subsistence
and swidden or hunting and gathering agriculture. Because they are often
cut off from access to the national and local court systems, they may rely on
other justice systems or tactics to mitigate violence and practice certain
forms of political autonomy. These practices mean that their assumptions
and values may differ remarkably from those who feel more at home
working within terms of real estate finances and the cash-based
marketplace, labor market-based employment, the heterosexual and
monogamous nuclear family, national courts, and other national institutions,
such as electoral democracies. In some sense, then, the subalterns may seem
like a group radically other to electoral democracies.
We will see later in this chapter the importance of the different terms by
which subaltern community members see the world in comparison with the
ways that those with a high school or university education see the world.
Since many subalterns understand the world in terms derived largely from
oral knowledge, they often present an important challenge to modern,
European-derived types of knowledge about them. They are largely
excluded from public education and often do not share Enlightenment
European assumptions and values that are promoted by most modern mass
educational instruction worldwide. Understanding the actions, desires, and
thinking of subalterns has proven to be very difficult, if not impossible,
since their view of events is often violated when translated into language
that makes “sense” in terms drawn from modern liberal humanism and mass
education.20 Subaltern democratic practice often becomes legible only as an
interruption of the assumption of a performative role, a role such as citizen
or middle-class activist, specifically an intervention that exposes the
foreclosure of humanity or citizenship by a “speaking otherwise.”21
Subalterns work to represent themselves outside of the lines of
representation laid down by official institutions of representation, where
their speech does not have a structure or institution that makes recognition
possible.22 This also suggests that the ways in which those subalterns
discussed in this chapter are presented have already been reduced to the
terms of modern, mass education and the liberal state, and in that sense are
not being represented on their own terms.23 So, any time we think we may
have understood the subaltern in terms that make sense to us, it might be
best to take that seeming success as a warning that appropriation and
distortion may well be at work.
 When subalterns enter into the public sphere, they depart from their
status as obstructed from democracy, and in that sense enter into a
constructive crisis.24 Yet, the politics of such moments are complex. Take,
for example, some of the best-known subalterns of the early twenty-first
century, the women of the Zapatista movement, who were able to reach
national attention through a peaceful campaign after movement participants
had laid down their arms to influence Mexican policies. These efforts led at
one point to a Zapatista woman, Commandanta Esther, speaking before the
Mexican National Congress.25 Yet, achieving an audience with a
government was not a positive event, since ultimately the Zapatista efforts
to change Mexican policies failed, and they instead turned to a democratic
practice centering on autonomy. Yet, the tendency to take interventions in
national policy as the measure of democracy limits democracy to within the
terms of the European state and its global imitations.
A different way to work with subaltern differences is to provide
infrastructural and institutional mechanisms that can make what the
subaltern demands count by giving those demands a certain traction.26 An
important part of this egalitarian practice is the building of infrastructure to
“establish, implement, and monitor structures that allow subaltern
resistance to be located and heard.”27 This traction rewrites “reason” so that
the subaltern may come to see themselves as having agency, as being able
to enter into the circuits of democracy as full participants. Producing these
mechanisms also provides a way for those educated in formal academic
terms to engage ethically with the subaltern in interrupting the systemic
blockages of the subaltern from the “freedoms” of democratic societies
understood as electoral democracies.28 This practice is close to what Paulo
Freire called organizers to consider: how we might organize so that those
who come from below may become subjects opening alternative paths to
those of becoming “themselves oppressors” or “sub-oppressors.”29 This
work may involve a kind of haunting by the subaltern, understood as a
persistent effort to recognize the limits of political norms and identities as
they persistently erase their subalterns, their Others.30 This notion of the
subaltern challenges activists and critics to rethink the limits of
recognizability for egalitarian democratic practices and social difference.
We will see examples of such infrastructural and institutional mechanisms
in the pages to come.
 An emphasis on the subaltern allows us to find ways to recognize how
these communities and social sectors are active subjects, working towards
their own goals even as they are ignored and obstructed by national policies
and capitalist markets.31 So, the subaltern refers not only to a demographic
group but also to a set of problems produced by the assumption that those
operating under modern liberalism can know with confidence what are the
desires and demands of the subaltern.
The divergent terms and logics at work in subaltern communities mean
that modes of participation and resistance to violations by the liberal
modern state may be difficult to recognize as democratic. Some have even
suggested that those active in subaltern social spaces are illegible to those
who occupy spaces produced by complicity with the patriarchal state and
the secular liberal European imaginary.32 Due to the difficulties in
understanding democracy presented by this notion of difference, it helps to
proceed with caution and avoid simply representing the views of the
subaltern in some way that makes them seem “reasonable.”33 In this sense,
subaltern critique is among those practices that “claim rights as [citizens]
with a difference.”34 In this practice, supposedly authoritative logics and
narratives written elsewhere, such as in Europe or in the global civil society
of NGOs and the U.N., are displaced. Through listening to the subaltern,
they may “claim entrance into this story [of rights] with a difference”
through struggle and renegotiation of the terms enforced by the electoral
state.35
Here, the term “difference” recognizes that the state logics and
institutions often do not recognize members of the subaltern as citizens with
full rights; yet subaltern communities may continue to work strategically
with this mistaken logic in social struggle to deal with problems on the
ground. So, subaltern communities often deploy logics and assumptions that
differ from those of European modernity, and we will explore some barriers
to knowing these communities here. In this chapter, I introduce several
tactics for avoiding and parodying the calculations of the Eurocentric
modern, while also discussing some modes of organizing that work to claim
state resources and achieve state accountability. By advocating for
infrastructural change and building collectivities aimed at gendered social
relations not suitable for modern states, subaltern communities may
produce a sense of the democratic will that will be difficult to appropriate
under capitalist-centered democratic practices.36
 The difficulties in understanding the subaltern are central to the overall
argument of this book: that democracy as it has been captured by modern
nation states and their educational systems differs from the democracy of
communities dedicated to equality. The democratic “real” as it is practiced
in the modern nation state consistently produces inequality. The “real” of
history as most middle-class democratic citizens know it is found by the
subaltern to be a violation, a form of violence, by which the subaltern is
surgically removed from the democratic polity or body.37 In this way, the
subaltern provides a way to explore democracy with a differance,
democracy practiced by those who are not captivated by the representative
electoral practices of the nation state.
Despite the large size of this population as a potential electorate, very
little has been written about how the subaltern understand democracy.
Investigating their self-governance finds a broad range of practices,
including some who deploy practices responsible to all by drawing on the
threads of the fabric of local practices torn by centuries of violence to
reweave equal social relations.38
One key characteristic of the subaltern for our study is the way in which
they organize themselves. Historians and students of social movements
have noted that those who make their lives in this domain often operate in a
horizontal fashion through established territorial, class, or kin networks
rather than the highly centralized vertical relations that characterize colonial
and postcolonial parliamentary and other modern administrative
structures.39 One important resource for subaltern communities is the long-
established social norms and community values that work to provide a
“non-antagonistic countervailing power to check and control the abuse of
power and manipulation by the wielders of dominant power.”40 These
values and practices include open information systems in communities,
democracy in labor relations, common ownership of land and other
productive assets, and labor exchanges and other mechanisms for working
shared, commons-based land and resources: multiple practices reinforcing
cooperation, mutual exchange, and equity.41 We will see more of these
practices later in the chapter.
The reliance on established social norms in some subaltern communities
does not mean that they achieve equality, as we will see below. Women and
other social actors who have not done well under modern electoral
democracies do not always do well under established traditional social
practices. Rather than assuming that women and other groups that do not do
well under modern electoral systems did worse under traditional
governance systems, we will examine each specific historical situation
below to investigate where equality is successfully put into practice and
where that does not occur.
So, what democratic “real” is found in subaltern democratic practices? If
there are democracies other than the democracy of the literate middle
classes and wealthy, what do they look like? How do they work? Exploring
subaltern democracy is our main objective in this chapter. Since most ways
of capturing subaltern democratic practices reduce them to terms that
“make sense” in European, middle-class ways of making sense, the
discussion to come will work to retain some sense of the differences at
work in subaltern spaces.42 Rather than attempting to name a single
“subaltern” form of democracy abstracted out of concrete social
circumstances, we will explore several different sites where subalterns carry
out egalitarian practices with attention to the ways in which these specific
sites resist common understandings of democracy. For these reasons, the
egalitarian practices of subaltern communities will supplement the terms of
the European Enlightenment, and are important to our discussion.

Landless Workers Movement in Brazil

Our first exploration of egalitarian self-governance comes from Brazil,

where a movement has emerged to reshape the politics of the poor. This
movement is known as the Movement of Rural Workers without Land
(Portuguese: Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra), commonly
abbreviated as MST, and in English as the Landless Workers Movement,
even though many of its constituents own land or have access to land.43
Rather than focusing on the narrow issue of land ownership, the founders
and many participants in the movement chose the category of “rural
workers” (trabalhadores rurais) to emphasize not only land but also the
need for agrarian reform, the expansion of the group of land owners beyond
the wealthy, and social change that would address the desires of the rural
poor, the urban poor, and the shrinking class of small-scale landowners.44
The MST takes as its forebears the Indigenous Guarani community, the
runaway slave communities and Canudos settlement of the nineteenth
century, the Contestado Wars of 1912–16, and the Peasant Leagues. Some
of these predecessors found ways to provide land to the landless and to the
Indigenous; they also shared duties and power through collective
management and rejected state law to provide their own forms of
autonomous justice in ways that were useful to the MST participants. The
global smallholder farmers’ movement La Via Campesina, to be discussed
in Chapter 5, was also an important model for MST.45
The movement began under the Brazilian military dictatorship in the late
1970s, with encampments in the south and an initial national congress in
1984. At first it was one of many movements supporting democratic
elections, but after an electoral government took power, the MST realized
that, despite victories in 1988 at constitutional reform for those who wanted
access to land, democracy would take more than elections.46 Virtually all
members of the MST movement come “from a world of abusive
exploitation and extreme poverty, where, despite Brazil’s formal
democracy, they had no influence whatsoever over key factors in their
lives.”47 This combination of extreme poverty and the inability to determine
major factors in their lives is one of the ways to identify a subaltern
population.
MST emerged in the mid-1980s out of the specific politics of a long
history of struggle of rural laborers. In Brazilian history, there have been
several types of contractual forms of rural labor: rural wage earners, tenant
farmers, sharecroppers, and specific jobs (such as cowboy or teamster). In
Brazil, there is no collective noun for peasants like the Spanish term
campesino or comparable to the term “peasant,” a term used in the United
States during the Cold War to refer to those who might threaten U.S.
interests by spreading the Cuban Revolution.48 The state had
institutionalized rural unions in 1944 to incorporate rural workers into state
membership, and the state also formed the Agency for Agrarian Reform in
1962 and passed the Rural Workers Statute in 1963 to produce uniform
legal codes and categories. Put in place shortly before the 1964 coup that
signaled the beginning of the military dictatorship, this statute lumped small
property holders with salaried workers, renters, and squatters and separated
them from sharecroppers in order to align them with the state and increase
agricultural production.49
Across Brazil, a wealthy few have historically owned land as large
estates, so that the majority of the population have no access to land in
either rural or urban settings. Others who may have made a living as small
landowners found that over the generations they were unable to give
sufficient land to all their children. They also may have lost land with the
demise of many coffee plantations during the crisis of the early 1970s or
due to large-scale infrastructure projects such as dams. Beginning in the
1970s, they may have lost their land due to mechanizing of agriculture or
reduced access to credit for small-scale producers.50 Many small
landowners also have been pressured to enter into the wage workforce by
the expanding market for wage labor or by the incorporation of land into the
market economy and its subsequent loss for subsistence food production.
These small-hold landowners who have lost access to capital and a
sustainable lifestyle have come to be the most active members of the
movement.51
MST participants have come to include small-scale landowners, urban
slum dwellers, migrants from the countryside to the cities, town-dwellers
who work in agriculture during the day, and women who want to work a
subsistence plot while their husbands and sons work as day laborers in other
locations. Interviews with MST settlement participants have shown that the
participants range from landowners without enough land to provide for their
children, to former landowners, to former coffee plantation workers, to a
few members who worked in rural employment outside of agriculture; over
half of the adults have lived for some period of time in a town or a city.
Most participants use the phrase “without land” to refer to a poor person,
and the issues of the movement include extending social and citizenship
rights and rallies against neoliberal economic policies.52 In this sense, MST
constituents have a broader range of goals beyond rural land reform.
The MST struggles for land have been met with violence on the part of
landowner thugs, police, and paramilitaries, leading to the deaths, according
to a Catholic Church estimate, of 1,465 between 1985 and 2006.53 Some
efforts at land reform took place under President Lula da Silva after his
election in 2002 as part of the poverty alleviation program that encouraged
school attendance and child vaccination.54 Yet, the increasing importance to
Brazil’s elected leadership of international corporations and export food
crops has meant that the MST members are now fighting not only rich
Brazilian landowners, local police, the domestic media, and the courts but
also “big corporations and global financial houses.”55 At present, the 400 or
so food production cooperatives of MST members on their settlements have
to compete not only with Brazilian small farmers in rural markets but also
with transnational agribusinesses in urban settings and the national
market.56
The democratic character of the movement is complex and contested,
varying across the different settlements and the different phases of the
movement, and also across different geographic regions. Early in its history
in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the movement participants decided to
steer away from established centralized organizing practices associated with
rural trade unions and the Catholic Church.57 Like many of the larger-scale
organizations examined in this book, MST uses a mixture of local
assembly-based governance with representative elected governance bodies.
MST land squatter camps are divided into cells of friends and relatives,
each of which selects two representatives to make up the camp coordinating
committee; the cells are encouraged but not required to select one man and
one woman for this work. Squatter camps have daily assemblies to report
on events and address disagreements,58 and community debates in the
squatter and settler communities are generally resolved through an
assembly discussion and vote.59 These camps maintain strong relations with
the established settlements, which also have assemblies and send elected
representatives to join regional and state committees. The camps and
settlements each elect two representatives (and again are encouraged to
choose one man and one woman) to form a regional coordination
committee. Each of these elects two representatives to make up a state
coordination committee. Because the state coordination committees are
large and cumbersome, they elect representatives to a smaller group, the
state council, which in practice runs the affairs of MST in each Brazilian
state. Each state council in turn elects two representatives to the national
coordination committee, which, like the state coordination committee,
elects a smaller national council of twenty-one people, which is the more
powerful body.60
Much of the governance of MST occurs at the level of the local camps
and settlements, which are assembly-based processes, and at the state
council level, which is an elected representative-based process. The local
settlements and camps do have considerable freedom in determining what
they do, and how they organize and educate themselves.61 Yet, those
concerned about entrenched individual and oligarchic issues with electoral
systems will take note that membership in the twenty-one people on the
powerful national council has so far always included three people. None of
these comes from a landless people’s camp, all three are former seminarians
involved in the founding of MST in the 1980s, and all three are men who
are elected every time their term on the national council expires.62 In
examining whether the national council is accountable to the general
members, even those sympathetic to the MST movement note that the
presence of these three cofounders suggests that the MST structure is not
completely democratic, since no one yet has challenged their leadership. 63
While some critics do argue that the MST is an organization controlled by a
small number of leaders indoctrinating the other members, local leadership
members argue that “The leadership listens to what the grassroots say. We
get things wrong and we change the policy after protests from the base. We
did over the collectivization of agriculture. And we did over gender.”64 A
1994 shift away from centralized imposition of a Cuban collective model to
more localized determination of collective work and decision-making was
one important benchmark in the assertion of grassroots control over the
national movement.65
Movement towards equality in often male-centered rural settings requires
the transformation of social norms, and this has been a significant topic of
discussion and work in the MST. Women have been involved from the
beginning of the movement, and have always comprised a large proportion
of the squatter camps and established settlements, perhaps because many
men have to work away from their families for cash wages whenever and
wherever they can find wage work. Women have at times held a stronger
commitment to the movement than some men, and have even defended
some of the squatter camps from armed eviction efforts.66 Yet, women have
routinely been challenged by family members, both openly and in subtle
ways, and ignored by men in the movement.67 So, gender equality has been
an important issue for the movement, which has been approached through
encouraging women’s leadership, as discussed above, and in giving
attention to the younger MST generation raised in the settlements, who may
not share their parents’ conservative views on sexuality, gender relations,
and even the MST movement itself.68 Yet, gender equity is not an easy
matter in the MST process, as is often the case in other rural communities
where men have long-established unequal authority and power.69
Political training and literacy of rural movement members has been an
important part of the MST work against inequality in leadership and
organization.70 The movement had long noted the need for education in its
settlements, which at times included 80 percent unlettered adults and many
children.71 After local universities developed a program in 1996 to train
94,000 rural education teachers, the government minister took over the
program and promised to extend it, only to abolish the program in 2000.
After union confederations developed joint programs with the MST, only to
have the unemployment crisis of 1990 undermine the trade unions, MST
went ahead with the education programs on its own. In the 1990s, MST
developed agreements with international agencies like UNESCO and the
Catholic Church, and also founded programs with universities to certify its
graduates. By 2001, the MST had enrolled over 100,000 children in 1,200
schools employing 3,800 mostly MST-trained teachers, and 1,200 educators
teaching 25,000 teens and adults, and had even begun building its own
university near São Paulo.72
MST began as a movement working against the grain of landholding
practices that impoverish many in rural areas. It has had to engage with the
electoral state to work to hold it accountable to its own laws, such as the
1988 constitutional reforms. As the impact of the economic crisis of 1990
demonstrates, MST has had to go its own way at certain points, not turning
towards the state or even labor unions for funding or political leverage in
the pursuit of its goals. In more recent decades, MST has at times interacted
with the state, such as when the Lula government implemented policies to
provide minimum family support levels.73 In this way, MST in some
respects works within the property-law framework enforced by the state
even as it also attempts to interrupt the social inequalities that have resulted
from the property laws and the specific, selected ways in which the law is
enforced and practiced.
How is the subaltern warning part of considering the MST movement?
As in our other chapters, readers may be tempted to reduce key concepts,
characteristics, struggles, and accomplishments into terms that make a
certain type of “sense” to those educated to take the liberal European
notions of democracy and success for granted. Two examples will give us a
sense of what is at stake in these misnamings.
The first is a central term for the MST: land. The significance of farming
land is difficult to grasp for those who have not spent a lifetime (or
generations of lifetimes) in direct, physical contact with the earth, as many
farming families in Brazil have. This significance is compounded for those
who farm the land as subsistence farmers, depending on a day-to-day basis
on the land for satisfying hunger in a direct way: going out to harvest, and
coming in to cook and feed themselves. A sense of the value-laden
character of land might be hinted at with phrases like “Mother Earth,” a
term sometimes used in some parts of the official discourse of the MST
movement.74 This phrase suggests that the value of the earth is beyond
measure, like the meaning for each of us of our own mother, laden with
affect and incalculable. However, the term is used as a metaphor in the
movement and does not capture the physical or material and spiritual import
carried by the term “land” for farming families in the MST.
In this approach, relationship with the “land” is not objectified or
commodified, as it might be in farming for market sale or for commodity
export. Instead, it is more oriented towards what might be called “a
responsibility to cultivate”75 and a sense of ethics, a sense of relational
propriety that has long been lost for most urban or suburban residents in so-
called “developed” areas of Brazil and elsewhere. To counter the common
tendencies to romanticize this relationship of land with the human, we
might remind ourselves, using European science, of the biological
dependence of the human body on the land as an angle that may open up
some perception of the unrecognizable under the Enlightenment calculus of
meaning and value. However, the turn towards the European is a turn away
from the centrality of land for those who have largely escaped subjection to
Enlightenment assumptions through school learning, as most unlettered
subalterns have.
The second warning comes in relation to a central practice and term in
the MST movement, captured in the Portuguese word mística. This term
refers to the use of ritualized events by MST participants on various
occasions, such as in meetings and classrooms and when a group
encounters an obstacle. Místicas are participatory, decentralized, and
rotated, so that many participate.76 Two reductions of this term have been
analyzed: to the Christian rituals of Catholic liberation theology, which was
important to the founding of the MST,77 and to the Marxist ideology of left
organizing.78 One meaning of the term, which has been variously translated
as “mystique” or “elán” or “millenarian,” is that which occurs “[a]nytime
something moves toward making a human being more humane.”79 Other
renderings of this term are as an “experience that produces culture” as
culture is understood by MST participants, in one outside commentator’s
reading,80 or something “combining dream with the political” or “love for
the cause” in the view of Clarice, an MST participant,81 or the moment
when “I come to the realization that I want land, food, and life for others,
not just for me” in the view of Gorete, another MST member.82 As opposed
to the value of the real held by many who study social movements, the
importance of mística is that it allows people to dream what they want in
order to achieve it, since, as Salete, a student in an MST school, once said,
“To dream is detrimental to the established order, and organization is what
the dominant class fears, because what they fear isn’t weapons, but these
two elements.”83
As in Chapter 2, readers may be warned against reducing mística to
something religious or spiritual, even as it seems to be important for the
counter-realities of dreaming and love that at times suffuse the political and
human relations. Here, MST democratic practices seem best understood not
in terms of political science or “realpolitik” but in terms shaped by another
reality (or realities). These Other terms are central to the project of
recognizing the workings of difference in democracy that were discussed in
the Introduction. Here, we can see them at work in preventing the
colonizing appropriation of MST forms of egalitarian practice into the
Greco-European forms of democratic practice that have been central to
many modern states.
Other movements by those without land may also be found in urban
settings, such as the Organización Frente Popular Francisco Villa Izquierda
Independiente or OFPFVII (Independent Left Popular Organization
Francisco Villa) active in Mexico City.84 Like the MST movement, this
organization squats on land and negotiates with land owners and
government officials for legal access to the land, but its work centers on
urban and suburban land tracts in urban areas around Mexico City. They use
a combination of assemblies and direct participation with representative
practices to govern their affairs, rather than attempting to address their
needs through the clientelist and patronage practices of local political
parties active in the electoral process.

Rural and Urban Subalterns in India

Long-established mechanisms for egalitarian, equitable access to resources
and community power characterize rural and urban India in the present.
These practices in community-specific contexts remain despite centuries of
the “erosion of traditional communal bonds and values and disrupt[ions of]
the traditional system that assured a more equitable access to resources by
the poor and vulnerable groups.”85 These practices emphasize “horizontal
integration of people and groups associated with … a system that could be
sustainable over a historical period.”86
As we will see again and again in this chapter and others to come,
egalitarian communities and movements operate in circumstances and
histories where equality is possible because it has already been practiced
historically. The Indigenous communities explored in Chapter 2 know these
histories because of the heritage practices where they reside as they
continue in the present. Subaltern communities that are not Indigenous must
seek out and learn histories of egalitarian practices locally, regionally, and
globally. Present-day movement participants and community members
know these histories, despite the best efforts of national governments and
public educational systems to marginalize and erase them.
Many in India see participation in these heritage egalitarian mechanisms
as democratic practice, rather than associating democracy with formal
participation in state or local elections.87 One important characteristic of the
long-standing heritage practices is their emphasis on participation beyond
the ballot box, and on a trust of community practices outside of electoral
practices to ensure equal access to resources, including not only land but
also food, health care, education, and other resources.88 Similar failures to
equalize social relations among post-colonial nation states and the English
and other European colonizers are not overlooked in many postcolonial
nations. These similarities discredit the established notions of national
liberation and economic development celebrated by national, state, and
local elected governments.89
Egalitarian governance has an honorable history in India, where it is
associated with local movements in the Gandhian tradition of
postindependence India, and with the Chipko Movement and other popular
movements. The Chipko Movement was begun in the 1970s by rural
women opposed to logging practices that had government approval. The
group took direct action in the Chamoli district of the state of Uttar Pradesh
(known since 2002 as the state of Uttarakhand or Uttaranchal) to stop the
logging and protect the forests on which their lifestyles depended.90 When
the loggers tried to ignore them, they took their first action on March 26,
1974 by literally embracing the trees to save them from the loggers’
machinery, eventually intervening in logging auctions and other actions that
earned them the attention of government authorities and jail time.91
A more recent organization in India practicing participatory democracy
and noncentralized organizational structures is the Scrap Collectors Union
known as Kagad Kach Patra Kasthakari Panchayat (KKPKP) in the
metropolitan area of Pune in the state of Maharashtra, India.92 The
formation of KKPKP was initiated by the intervention of staff from the
Pune Sub-centre of the Department of Adult and Continuing Education and
Extension Work, at the SNDT Women’s University. The initiative was
undertaken to promote critical awareness and lifelong learning among waste
pickers, and was inspired by Paulo Freire’s method of popular education,
which stressed that adult education must be based on the recipients’
personal learning needs.93
Waste pickers retrieve paper, plastic, metal, and glass from garbage bins
or receptacles that are provided by the municipalities for the disposal of
garbage on the street, and from landfill sites where collected garbage is
transported and dumped. The membership of KKPKP is over 90 percent
women, most of them illiterate; the women predominate in the organization
because the KKPKP is made up of individuals from what is termed the
“informal sector” of employment, meaning that the workers are not
recognized as workers by the city of Pune or even by international labor
organizations.94 The organization members are also what are known in India
as dalits, meaning members of the outcaste groups who live outside of the
caste system and whose discrimination is so severe that they are still known
in some sectors as “untouchables.”95
Being illiterate and blocked from the labor market in other ways as well,
they are demographically recognizable as subalterns. As a community, they
are constantly confronted by gaps in understanding and failures of
representation by political parties. Their democratic practices diverge in a
consciously developed, explicit manner from the democratic practices of
the political parties of local, state, and national Indian electoral legislature.
Since the “rational” political programs of electoral political parties are
unable to account for the specific political questions of caste discrimination,
gender, and sexuality, their practices are enclosed by certain forms of
ethical and political limits.96 Exceeding these limits is an important goal of
the collective actions of the KKPKP members, an excess that incorporates
caste, class, and gender and sexual politics into the conception of the
political.97
In managing its own affairs, the KKPKP union declares that it “embraces
the value and principles of honesty, integrity, accountability, equality,
secularism, democratic participation, and nonviolence, all of which are non-
negotiable … [and] believes in a non-party, secular, and democratic
political process.” Built into the organization is a commitment to work
following principles that “[challenge] all inequalities of caste, class, age,
geographic region, and gender, and does not affiliate to any political
party.”98 After its founding in 1993, it grew rapidly due to the large number
of scrap collectors in Pune, and in 1998 the organization determined to
begin electing representatives of different neighborhoods in Pune and
nearby Pimpri. The decision to move to elected representatives was not
taken lightly, since elected representatives in India often have a reputation
for being unresponsive to their constituents.99 So, the KKPKP acts in a
manner that interrupts this unresponsiveness:

The members replace those [elected] representatives whom they

consider to be ineffective with new ones, because there have been
instances where representatives have been unresponsive to members’
grievances and others have been involved in financial corruption….
The body meets once a month to deliberate issues and for review,
planning, and decision-making.100

We will see in Chapter 5 that other large organizations have chosen to avoid
the KKPKP’s mix of assembly and representatives.
The KKPKP members have worked successfully to improve the very
difficult conditions under which their members work by enhancing their
economic conditions, working for legal recognition as workers, and other
social and cultural changes in the urban setting of Pune. By engaging in
campaigns and social movement struggles, KKPKP members have
demonstrated that they can engage successfully in the modern public
sphere, thereby interrupting the assumption that they do not have agency
and should remain passive in the face of their systemic exclusion from
rights and access to capitalist social mobility. Many Other subaltern
organizations engage with the Indian government on national, regional,
state, and local levels as well, improving their conditions on terms they
establish both in isolation and in networking with other groups.101
To get a clear sense of how this marginalized group came to the attention
of international observers and entered the public sphere, we might note that
much of this public awareness has come from its successful campaign of
advocacy in the city of Pune. The authors of a report published in English
were members of two organizations, the Asia Labour Exchange and The
Asia Monitor Resource Centre (AMRC), an independent nongovernmental
organization that focuses on labor concerns. To support democratic and
independent labor movements in the Asia Pacific region, AMRC upholds
the principles of workers’ empowerment and gender consciousness, and
follows a participatory framework.102 In this way, AMRC has also been part
of the process of bringing to widespread public awareness the systemic
blockage of the subaltern KKPKP members from access to social mobility,
demonstrating the importance of building solidarity between subalterns and
nonsubaltern organizations.
Two other organizations in India cross the divide of illiterate subalterns
and nonsubalterns. The first started out as an NGO for rural women’s
empowerment in 1998, when it was known as Sangtin. It was based on
funding from a government-funded organization, in turn funded by the
World Bank and implemented through the Human Resources and
Development Ministry of the government of India.103 After three years of
operations and extended self-reflection, Sangtin as a community-based
organization determined that the NGO model they were following was not
effectively being held accountable to the interests of the community that
they wished to serve. After studying the work of a comparable organization
in Rajasthan, they decided in 2005 to stop following the NGO funding
model in order to transform the hierarchies between subalterns and the paid
NGO professional staff, who were literate and nonsubaltern, and to rename
their organization.104
The new organization was named Sangtin Kisaan Mazdoor Sangathan
(Sangtin Peasants and Workers Organization, Sangtin KMS or SKMS), an
organization that by 2010 included some 5,000 poor farmers and rural
manual laborers in the Sitapur District, speakers of Awadhi, the main
language of the rural district, some 90 kilometers outside the megacity of
Lucknow, the capital of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.105 Some 90
percent of the members are also dalit, like the KKPKP Scrap Collectors
Union members. This newly formed organization links rural subalterns,
poor farmers, and rural part-time workers to middle-class, literate NGO
employees and teachers. The members of the SKMS group have come to
develop an important critique of the World Bank development policies.
They have begun working to push the local governmental administrative
officers for access to irrigation water and to information for the rural poor,
and to address issues of minimum wages and employment, caste and class
discrimination, and rural women’s experiences of hunger, sexuality,
motherhood, and activism.106 By intervening in the construction of gender
narrowly construed in NGO activism, the SKMS members began to
organize with both men and women. By working to increase awareness
among their members of the concrete practices at work to divert the benefits
of what appear to be laws and local practices empowering women, SKMS
members began to see how they might organize to interrupt the ways in
which seeming solutions to inequalities, such as legislation or NGO-funded
activities and academic studies, often “end up feeding the same hierarchies
that produce these oppressions.”107 As NGOs often are funded and originate
as a means “to help manage the problems produced by neoliberal politics
and to pacify those who have been hardest hit by such policies,”108 SKMS
has worked instead to “retain their accountability and transparency before
the people they work with.”109
SKMS organized in more than thirty villages to fight for irrigation canal
waters, for job cards guaranteed by local laws but never delivered, and for
minimum wage work cleaning the irrigation canals, among other issues. By
shifting away from an NGO women’s organization to an alliance of farmers
and workers, both women and men, SKMS refused the ghettoization of
women’s issues, and also made visible women’s labor and rights as both
farmers and workers. As might be expected, they encountered pushback
from NGOs (and their donors) as well as local vested interests, such as
those of heads of village administrative units and block development
officers carrying out national laws passed by elected representatives. By
intervening in long-standing practices of profiteering and corruption, they
also interrupted the caste-based patterns of behavior that characterize much
development work in India.110
To do their work, they have developed mechanisms whereby
 all the members of [our] alliance can participate fully in the processes
of making, revising, and deploying the coproduced knowledge, and in
developing rigorous structures of accountability that allow people from
all fields—the farms, the disciplines, and the villages of
“intervention”—to evaluate the relevance of that knowledge in their
own lives and journeys.111

These mechanisms implement an egalitarian knowledge circulation within

the organization that also allows all members to revise that knowledge as
they pursue accountability. The pursuit of accountability for local officials,
wealthy farmers, and others also creates what we might call a constructive
crisis in subalternity. That crisis is the moment of agency, when the
subaltern community members begin to see how to intervene in the local
public sphere from which they have been blocked systemically through
various means, and then act to carry out successful campaigns to gain equal
access to resources such as water, employment, and various rights. It is
constructive because as the subalterns successfully intervene in the local
public sphere, they have entered into the struggle for participation and are
no longer structurally blocked from access to the public sphere as
subalterns. While they certainly do not attain full equality as they leave the
category of the subaltern, they do erode the systemic blockages established
by the modern state, modern capitalist development practices, and modern
Euro-American forms of agriculture. As an organization that brings
subalterns into collaborative work with nonsubalterns, SKMS makes this
constructive crisis possible.
The second bridge organization links subalterns in India with well-
educated community members through the Medico Friend Circle (MFC).
This organization provides a response to the blockage produced through
modern social practices that generate inequalities, since it builds a site
where always present subaltern desires and demands become recognizable
to those who participate in modern social practices such as the waged or
salaried workplace, voting, or other state-supported practices. By bridging
subalterns with those educated formally in European-derived ways, MFC
provides the subaltern with traction on the public sphere, as discussed at the
beginning of the chapter.
MFC has survived for some forty years practicing participatory
democracy and noncentralized organizational structures, a significant
accomplishment given all the obstacles to continuous existence for equality-
oriented organizations.112 The organization brings together subaltern
communities with medical treatment professionals to address both pressing
health-care needs and the local, regional, and national Indian needs for
health-care reform. Its focus is on rural communities, particularly women’s
issues and tribal or dalit communities’ concerns, together with the same
concerns in urban settings: waste pickers, domestic laborers, unwaged
women’s work, and other topics of the marginal communities.113
Unlike other subaltern organizations discussed in this chapter, the MFC
includes as members medical professionals with high levels of formal
education. These members work actively with subaltern communities in all
phases of their work. MFC maintains democratic operations through its
structure: “MFC is organized in a noncentralized way: MFC is a loosely
knit group of friends from various backgrounds, medical and nonmedical,
often different in their ways of thinking and their modes of action.”114 They
advocate for the same structure in their efforts to change the health-care
system in India. For example, in 2011, they argued for the following
principle to be used in moves towards a universal health-care system:
“People centered and participatory planning and monitoring with
decentralised framework of decision making.”115 In their efforts to reform
the Indian national health-care system, they argue for actively nurturing
“structures for deliberative democracy” and “mechanisms for assessing and
articulat[ing] … people’s felt needs.”116 In advocating for participatory
democracy in their work, they argue for the practice of what MFC does in
its own day-to-day interactions across the divide of subalterns and formally
educated social elites.
The practice of mass-based, participatory democracy among
organizations like KKPKP, SKMS, and MFC produces egalitarian social
spaces, but also pressures groups into loose organizational models that in
practice may become ineffective.117 Personal decisions to participate by
middle-class activists, such as the ones important to both SKMS and MFC,
also lead to various forms of cynicism, withdrawal, and a desire to be
effective at scales beyond the local.118 As we saw in our discussion of MST
above and as we will see again in Chapter 5, egalitarian practices in
organizations are found at both the national and global levels, but with
some modifications in practices and goals. While some may see these
difficulties as foundational and pervasive,119 others, discussed in Chapter 5,
find that these obstacles may be overcome.
The importance for democracy of such a collaboration may be
understood from multiple perspectives. First, it provides an organizational
infrastructure for eroding the structural barriers to public sphere
participation in democratic governance by the state. This provides a
counterforce to the unequal practices that characterize much modern
capitalist democracy, such as the closure of civil society to nonelite social
sectors.120 Second, this sort of infrastructure also provides a platform for
criticism of the electoral representative democratic practices of the state.
Such critique might be heard more frequently from subaltern social sectors
if they retained any sense that the state might be interested in their survival,
their needs and demands, their contributions, and their participation.
However, as we have already discussed, the subaltern by definition know
better than to spend their time and energies on such fruitless critique,
generally accepting the normative condition of structural blockage from
participation. Such critique in this case can come not only from subalterns
but also from other social sectors. In these sectors, the normative exclusion
of the subaltern is not accepted. In nonsubaltern social sectors there may
persist the idealist hope that democracy may become, at some unknown but
persistently invoked future time, a place for the participation of all. Most
subaltern sectors have long ago given up on such baseless dreams. In the
case of MFC, this other social sector consists of health-care workers,
formally educated in the modern, mass education system derived from the
colonial decades. However, in other cases and other locales, the social
sector working with subalterns may be constituted through other
professions, such as lawyers,121 journalists,122 activists,123 writers and
artists,124 academics,125 teachers,126 and nonprofessional sectors.127
Risks abound in focusing on subaltern collaborations with professionals
or others educated within mainstream modern culture. One problem is that
the writings of the formally educated, middle-or upper-class nonsubalterns
may be mistaken for an accurate representation of the “reality” of the
subaltern. The newsletters of the MFC have little information about the
subalterns themselves, for example. The writings of the Sangtin Writers are
produced by educated, literate movement members, many of them
employed by NGOs and schools, not the unlettered subalterns themselves.
So, the insights summarized here do little to present a complete, authentic
picture of these democratic practices; however, they give us some sense of
how they might diverge from those of the electoral state.

Urban Venezuela Settlers’ Movements

While many associate subalterns with rural subsistence farmers and landless
workers, we may also find many egalitarian subaltern projects developed in
urban settings. Venezuela is a highly urbanized nation where women have
taken leadership in developing participatory democratic spaces in
shantytowns, known as the Settlers’ Movement, at times operating against
the grain and other times with the support of government programs under
Hugo Chávez and his successors. The post-1994 Venezuelan centralized
socialist state has similar problems to those of capitalist democracies like
the United States or Mexico, where the European-style modern centralized
nation state and the centralized corporate organizational structures are
normative. As centralization is carried out, those individuals and their
networked contacts and supporters achieve an unequal access to
institutional levers of power.
The subaltern character of some of the Settlers’ Movement that emerged
from grassroots social movements can be seen in their economic
characteristics: squatter families in urban undeveloped lands; squatters in
abandoned city-center towers; and people without resources who were
settled in refuge areas after environmental disasters. Other participants in
this movement were employed at the margins of capitalist labor, such as
domestic workers who were struggling for rights to be free from attacks by
employers, and tenants who were fighting evictions and arbitrary rent
increases.128
The prominent role of women in many of these movements suggests that
they are capable of overcoming an obstacle that in other movements has
been deeply entrenched and difficult to overcome: gender inequality.129 This
problem may be found not only in socialist or Communist societies, such as
China, but also in capitalist electoral democracies, such as the United
States, England, Mexico, Japan, and India. In the Venezuelan context, this
problem may be seen in the embrace by Hugo Chávez of socialist feminism,
but within specific terms that do not recognize leadership roles and
independent agency for women. For example, a 2009 Chávez speech
dedicated to “the selfless, fighting Venezuela women, to the woman-mother,
woman-companion, woman-daughter, woman-grandchild, to all women”130
reinforces the traditional representation of the faceless (and voiceless) ideal
woman tied to her role in the family and domestic sphere.131 In the Chávez
approach, women are central to the revolution yet are cast as its reproducers
and nurturers, obscuring much of their local political work and relegating
them “to roles in which they provide the context but not the content for
popular action.”132 This overlooks women’s territorialized politics, agency,
and knowledge, giving authorial voice and power to the male leader
embedded within the centralized state.
We find democratic subaltern social movements in La Vega, a
shantytown of some 250,000 residents in the southwestern hills surrounding
Caracas. The urban subalterns who live in shantytowns like La Vega often
emerge globally under electoral democracies in Venezuela, India, Mexico,
and other party democracies. La Vega itself grew over a period of four
decades during the Punto Fijo period (1958–98), “when a pact between
political elites of Acción Democrática (Democratic Action) and the Partido
Social Cristiano de Venezuela (Venezuelan Social Christian Party)
maintained a formal power-sharing democracy fueled by oil rents” that
excluded the interests of many groups, including the working poor and the
unemployed or underemployed subalterns. Under this period of electoral
party democracy, “civil society remained under the control of a male-led
and male-dominated political culture and system, [thereby] democratically
excluding women from power.”133 The Venezuelan party democracy of this
period was shaped by gender and race, when

the key social subjects of this pact were capital and labor, and the
practices of politics were highly patriarchal, reproducing a caste of
men as the economic and political elite through a corporatist system of
tightly controlled union and sectoral movements. When middle-and
upper-class women did participate, it was by consigning their
housework to other women (such as those from La Vega), and they
were often confined to traditionally feminized roles as political
“housewives.”134 The rights that they won were often liberal bourgeois
and excluded the needs and demands of poor and black women.135
 After President Hugo Chávez was elected in 1998, residents in La Vega
and other shantytowns formed urban land committees under a 2002
presidential order; each committee is made up of 100–200 shantytown
families who are allowed to petition for land titles on self-built homes, and
began to agitate for sanitation and other changes as well on their own
initiative.136 These committees carried out participatory planning in a way
that brought democratic equality into practice.137 These committees became
active in wealthy areas138 and in areas near the La Vega shantytown,139
claiming land through a formal, government-recognized project and also by
activating their own agency through “building or occupying speculative real
estate projects in underused spaces in central city areas.” Some see these
struggles as the emergence of new rights, different from modern property
rights: “the right to the oeuvre, to participation and appropriation.”140
In 2011, the Settlers’ Movement issued a manifesto for democratizing
urban life in other ways beyond the right to housing.141 As we will see in
Chapter 6 on everyday practices, efforts to democratize multiple aspects of
urban life often identify the politics of those who do not find the centralized
state effective in achieving equality. As Elizabeth, a woman organizer in the
La Vega shantytown, argues, “We developed the program of democratizing
the city, built on the idea of democratic control over our environments in
order to create social justice for all, with access to and control over
education, health, employment, community.”142 In the Venezuelan case, the
Settlers’ Movement manifesto advocated for local self-management in
partnership with the state, rather than subordinated to the centralized
mechanisms of the Venezuelan socialist state.143 By providing an egalitarian
mechanism in parallel to the centralized state, the Settlers’ Movement was
able to gain support from Chávez and his government, due to pressing
concerns about flooding in January 2011 that were pressuring Chávez
through public opinion. The movement’s successes at constructing their
own housing in medium-sized housing construction projects using
participatory planning practices had also demonstrated their effectiveness in
participatory, egalitarian practices. These participatory practices contrasted
with the centralized socialist practices, allowing little settler participation in
planning and building, that had previously been used under Chávez to
construct large housing projects with corporate partners from Cuba, Russia,
China, Iran, Turkey, and other socialist partner building corporations.
 So, how were the gender-equal practices of Venezuelan subalterns able to
disrupt these gender hierarchies? Taking place in urban shantytowns, they
grew out of “rich histories of struggle characterized by the high
participation of women—many of them single mothers facing the double
burden of domestic and informal labor.”144 These struggles were ways in
which women ensured their survival and created social relations for
themselves and their dependents, but they were also met with suspicion and
often rejection by political parties (of both right and left). The struggles also
were heavily influenced by traditions of direct democracy and community-
led change, growing out of urban cultures shaped by liberation theology and
popular education. This resulted in processes that “politicized the everyday,
community, and family.”145
The Settlers’ Movement organizations used participatory methods to
bring into their decision-making the knowledge of many. Cristina, a single
mother from an urban land committee in La Vega, describes how her group
was able to develop collective knowledge by talking with each other to
reflect on shared problems and experiences and then planning action.
Cristina describes what the participatory process means for her community:

Unless we begin to rebuild from below, to articulate our needs, desires

and energy into a shantytown movement, none of these structures will
ever be remade. Our communities will always be dictated to, passive
recipients of knowledge, resources, whatever. When we are conscious,
organized, when we see our power and potential, through this process
we begin to construct new structures, new relationships, a new
distribution of power, a new democracy.146

By rejecting the male leadership and elite, centralized structure of much

left activism as well as the heteronormative norms of the Venezuelan family
and the capitalist individualism of cash-based economies, Cristina works to
practice equality in building solutions, both literally and figuratively, to the
unequal relations of modern society.
The Settlers’ Movement organizations working together were successful
in practicing the gender and other participatory equality that the state
socialist organizations were unable to carry out. The result was a move
away from abstract and universalistic male-dominated entities such as
political parties, Bolivarian study circles, local and federal planning
councils, and workers’ unions, and towards self-managed, women’s-led
social organizations such as Technical Water Boards; Health and Urban
Land Committees; Communal Councils; Social Battle Rooms; Organised
Occupied Buildings; networks of tenants, concierges and refugees; and
Pioneers’ Camps.147 These practices allowed women to participate actively
on a daily basis in shaping their own affairs, both literally, in the
construction of their living quarters, and politically, in the practice of
women’s agency in the face of male-centered social norms and institutions.
We can see that the Settlers’ Movement was actively engaging with the
state in Venezuela, but took its own movement in egalitarian directions that
were impossible under state socialist organizations. Through their
independent work, the Settlers’ Movement organizations were able to
impact state policies to a certain extent, which is one measure of their
success. Their manifesto was a direct challenge not only to the state but also
to Venezuelan society, asking how the everyday interactions in Caracas and
beyond were democratic, a question we will return to in Chapter 6.
Similar movements have emerged in the twenty-first century through
social platforms, such as Slum Dwellers International, that for years have
been practicing “deep democracy” to self-manage improvements in their
settlements,148 and the Latin American Secretary of Popular Housing,
building a platform of mobilization involving tenants and urban squatters,
the unemployed, self-help housing cooperatives, and the rural and urban
landless.149
Important difficulties in discussing the Venezuelan women at the center
of the narrative just told are presented by the act of reading the testimonies
of subaltern women. Sara Motta, the researcher who gave us the quotes
above, argues that she is presenting an “autonomist Marxist feminist
analysis of the narratives of three women participants in Venezuela’s
Bolivarian Revolution.”150 Yet, while she claims that her “analysis from
below” begins with women’s experiences and struggles, she also notes that
as a highly educated academic researcher, “I have used their realities as an
opportunity to engage in solidarity with the complexity of feminized
political subjectivities being formed.” To carry this out, she must draw on
“autonomist Marxist feminist analysis developed by feminist activists in
Italy to engage with women in movement in the urban land committees in
Venezuela.”151 Here, Motta suggests that Italian autonomist feminists may
provide an analytical model useful for solidarity work by an academic
activist with Venezuelan subaltern women. Yet, this assumes that the
experiences of the subaltern women will be transparent and readily
available to her, rather than noting how postcolonial reason forecloses,
obscures, and seems to entrap the subaltern, making it difficult, if not
impossible, for elites and intellectuals to understand or know them.152
By assuming that the experiences of Italian autonomous feminists and
subaltern women from the slums of Caracas are related or even inhabiting a
continuous space, women’s class, gender, colonial, and other historicized
differences are reduced to a common social position. This identity operates
under the sign of universal “woman,” held together by the hegemonic logic
of modern knowledge practices, and operates to produce and sustain the
barriers that work to foreclose and contain subaltern women and men.153
Rather than “ventriloquizing the subaltern” to produce a position of
solidarity for the educated intellectual activist,154 difference might intrude
here as unrepeatable; not as a universal category tied to a unified, embodied
identity in history but as the differentiated, unconsolidated space of the
subaltern, a space outside lines of social mobility under capitalism and the
modern state.155 Rather than presenting the grounds for certain forms of
activism, as Motta finds them, subaltern spaces instead may remind us that
the agency of these women was Other to the state even as it came to be
validated by the modern state (a socialist electoral state) and entered the
public sphere through that recognition by the modern state. In that sense,
Motta’s analysis does not capture the subaltern’s own “analysis from
below,” which forms against (while also being entangled with) the logic of
the modern state. Rather, it reduces this “analysis from below” to terms that
make sense within modern reason, even when directly quoting the language
of Cristina and others who are demographically part of the subaltern sector.
As Cristina and the other women at the forefront of the Settlers’
Movement engage with the state to advocate for their demands and their
dependents, they bring the subaltern to a constructive crisis through which
they are able to secure housing and other resources from the state. The
participatory democracy they deployed to achieve these successes diverges
from the centralized hierarchies of the state, of political parties and other
leftists in Venezuela and beyond. In that sense, it was a successful practice
of equalizing social relations where there was inequality and of effectively
making democratic claims on the modern state. Yet, the warning that these
practices deployed logics and assumptions that differ from those of modern
intelligibility is an important way to reinstall difference as a significant
epistemic limit for an analysis operating within the limits of modern reason
and liberal logic, an analysis such as the one you are reading now.

Conclusion

Subaltern equality in practice introduces histories of democratic practice

and terms and methods for calculating equality that diverge significantly
from those of the modern electoral state. The difficult material conditions in
which subalterns often make their living mean that they have had to be
creative in finding ways to manage their affairs. The high-stakes decisions
made in subaltern communities as they govern their lives mean that their
turn, in some cases, to equality in practice is not an unrealistic choice made
in some speculative, utopian space. Rather, we have seen that the use of
assemblies and other participatory democratic structures has served them
well in pursuing their concrete material demands.
The different communities discussed in this chapter have a complex
variety of relations to the state. SKMS directly works to hold the state
accountable to its own laws, while KKPKP works to achieve recognition in
the eyes of the state. The shift away from the centralized structure of the
government-funded NGO Sangtin to a more decentralized grassroots model
of organizing pursued by SKMS suggests a dissatisfaction with the limits
imposed on Sangtin by the NGO model. Still, the subaltern movements
examined in India have not attempted to pursue more autonomous goals, as
we found with the MST and the Indigenous groups in the previous chapter.
We also saw in Venezuela, India, and Brazil that many subaltern practices
have been established in order to pressure the state to be more equal in its
distribution of resources, authority, decision-making power, and cultural
credibility.
Democracy for the subaltern does not necessarily draw on the European
nation state for its models. Instead, we have seen that the MST looked to
the Indigenous Guarani community, the runaway slave communities and
Canudos settlement of the nineteenth century, the Contestado Wars of
1912–16, the Peasant Leagues, and La Via Campesina. Some of these
traditions of equality in practice are the explicit Others to the colonial and
postcolonial regime, as in the cases of the Guarani and the runaway slave
and Canudos and Contestado communities. Some are the openly resistant
Others to capitalism, as were the Peasant Leagues. La Via Campesina, to be
discussed in Chapter 5, is a vocal opponent of corporate globalization.
Several have their own notions of equality under the law, perhaps most
explicitly in the case of the Canudos community, who established their own
legal system parallel to the postcolonial state. None of these traditions
centers on human rights or citizenship or other universalist European
notions that ground the modern constitutional state. To call the MST a
democratic organization would require either ignoring these differences or
rewriting the meaning of democracy in a way that refuses to give the
normative model for democracy to the European liberal state. They seem to
practice what we might call democracy with a differance.
Yet, some of these subaltern practices are focused on autonomous social
and political spaces parallel to modern states, at times out of a failure of
states and other modern institutions to produce equality and recognize the
existence and respect the importance of subaltern communities. The
educational work carried out by MST is comparable to the schools created
by the Zapatistas both in goal and in philosophy. Both organizations expect
that their schools will teach the reality of the poor, the subaltern, who make
up their communities. And both organizations had to produce their own
schooling systems parallel to government and private schooling systems,
since they wanted a critical analysis of inequality and exploitation, which
other school systems did not provide. The major difference between the two
movements is that the MST is national in scope in one of the largest nations
in the world geographically, while most of the Zapatista schools are found
in one state of Mexico.
The women’s leadership in the Caracas Settlers’ Movement might be
contrasted with the shift from a centralized, government-funded women’s
NGO (or GONGO), Sangtin, that darling of transnational funders, to a
grassroots organizational form, Sangtin KMS or SKMS, for women and
men to work. Rather than isolating women as a special social problem,
Sangtin KMS instead brings women’s work as both farmers and laborers to
the fore along with the men’s, rendering them visible in spheres where
vested interests are unwilling to recognize them in the struggle for access to
resources.
In thinking about how equality is understood by subalterns, we have seen
that MST relational propriety, which comes through working the land as
well as responsibility to cultivate the land, diverges from Enlightenment
norms of social relations and ethics. Being in relationship with the land is a
topic we discussed in Chapter 2 as an important way in which Indigenous
democratic practices resist easy appropriation under the terms of the state
and electoral democratic practices, resistances that we find here again in a
different form. And mística occurs “[a]nytime something moves toward
making a human being more humane” or when someone realizes “I come to
the realization that I want land, food, and life for others, not just for me” or
dreams in a way detrimental to the established order.
Equality is calculated differently by the subaltern, in terms that have to
do with survival. If under the liberal electoral state equality is defined in
terms of rights, citizenship, and the law, for the subaltern, equality is
understood in terms of livelihood and material needs as they are linked to
solidarity and relations of respect. In this way, we might say that the
subaltern turns away from abstract notions of equality towards equal
material relations.
In the end, difference produced multiple blockages for our analysis. We
know that we do not know enough about the mística practices at the center
of the MST, since we are hobbled by the secularism of the modern and by
the tendency to reduce subaltern practices to the Christian or partisan terms
intelligible to the narrow scope of modern politics. We also know that we
don’t know enough about Cristina and her dependents and the other
participants in the Caracas Settlers’ Movement, since our analysis has been
shaped through the lens of autonomous Marxist feminism. To understand
democracy with a subaltern differance requires an ability to work with the
unknown, with not knowing enough, to find ethical relations with the
Others of modern capitalism and the electoral state.

Notes
1 Walter Mignolo uses the term “subaltern” in this colloquial sense in his Local Histories/Global
Designs to refer to people living outside of Europe who have been colonized by Europeans:
Walter Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000),
12. This colloquial sense also underlies his distinction between “internal” and “external:”
Mignolo, Local Histories, 33–4. A similar maneuver is seen also in Enrique Dussel’s use,
following Wallerstein, of the term “periphery” (as in “the peripheral nations, or the peoples …
who are dominated by the center”), where Dussel locates the poverty, misery, and hunger of “85
per cent of the world’s population:” “Six Theses towards a Critique of Political Reason: The
Citizen as Political Agent,” in The Political, ed. David Ingram (Malden, MA: Blackwell
 Publishing, 2002), 266. However, these and related terms make it impossible to distinguish
between, on the one hand, the wealthy elites of the global South and the educated bourgeois
middle classes, important forces in colonization in the present, and on the other hand, the
Indigenous and other poor of the global South. In granting themselves membership in “the
subaltern,” “the periphery,” and “AmerIndia,” Dussel and Mignolo conflate themselves, highly
literate, European-descended and European-educated middle-class persons, with illiterate
subalterns and the Indigenous. Acosta develops a similar critique of Mignolo and others in Latin
American Studies: Abraham Acosta, Thresholds of Illiteracy: Theory, Latin America, and the
Crisis of Resistance (New York: Fordham University Press, 2015), 26–77. Criticisms of Drucilla
Cornell’s work for installing substantive identitarian notions in her use of the subaltern may also
be found in Rapaport, Theory Mess, 144–5. For these reasons, I follow Gramsci and Spivak and
use the term “subaltern” in a manner linked to class difference in the analysis to come.
2 Partha Chatterjee, “Democracy and Subaltern-Citizens in India,” in Subaltern Citizens and Their
Histories, ed. Gyanendra Pandey (London: Routledge, 2010), 193–208; Raúl Zibechi,
Territories in Resistance: A Cartography of Latin American Social Movements, trans. Ramor
Ryan (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2012), 193–4; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “The New
Subaltern: A Silent Interview,” in Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial, ed. V.
Chaturvedi (London: Verso, 2012); Spivak “Popular,” 476. Reasons for using this class-specific
notion of the subaltern are developed in Spivak, “Popular,” where she argues against “recoding
class logic for [INGO] corporate fundraising to purchase virtue for capitalist globalization,” a
logic found in such authors as Hobsbawm or Hardt and Negri, who see the subaltern as a figure
for “the people” or the disenfranchised without a class description (477–82, 485n23).
3 Steven Muhlberger and Phil Paine, “Democracy’s Place in World History,” Journal of World
History 4, no. 1 (1993): 27, 44, www.jstor.org.ccl.idm.oclc.org/stable/20078545; Guillermo
Bonfil Batalla, México Profundo: Reclaiming a Civilization, trans. Philip Dennis (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1996), 169; Ranajit Guha, “On Some Aspects of the Historiography
of Colonial India,” in Selected Subaltern Studies, ed. Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Chakravorty
Spivak (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 37–44.
4 UNESCO Institute for Statistics, “UNESCO eAtlas of Literacy,”
http://tellmaps.com/uis/literacy/#!/tellmap/-1003531175, accessed January 30, 2016.
5 If we use literacy as a basic measure of subaltern populations, then when illiteracy is defined as
no reading or numerical skills, estimates range up to 1 billion (14 percent of the world
population) (“International Literacy Day September 7, 2001 Washington, DC,” accessed
February 4, 2016, www.01.sil.org/literacy/LitFacts.htm; UNESCO Institute for Statistics,
“UNESCO eAtlas of Literacy: Methodology,” http://tellmaps.com/uis/literacy/, accessed
January 30, 2016.). If illiteracy is defined as having only basic reading and numerical skills,
then estimates are one in five of the world population (20 percent) or about 1.4 billion
(UNESCO, “Global Monitoring Report: Literacy for Life,” “Understandings of Literacy,” 2006,
147–59, www.UNESCO.org/education/GMR2006/FULL/chapt6_eng.pdf, accessed February 2,
2016).
6 An overview of debates over the definitions of the term “peasant” is summarized by A.R. Desai,
“Introduction,” in Peasant Struggles in India, ed. A.R. Desai (Bombay: Oxford University
Press, 1979), xxii–xxiii, and Guha, “Historiography,” 44.
7 Guha, “Historiography,” 42.
8 UNESCO, “eAtlas.”
9 “International Literacy Day: September 7, 2001: Washington DC.”
10 Gayatri Spivak, “From a Haverstock Hill Flat to the U.S. Classroom,” in What’s Left of Theory,
ed. Judith Butler, John Guillory, and Kendall Thomas (New York: Routledge, 2000), 26; Guha,
“Historiography,” 41–2; Luca Fanelli and Sarah Sarzynsky, “The Concept of Sem Terra and the
Peasantry in Brazil,” Journal of Developing Societies 19, no. 2–3 (2003): 342–7, doi:
 10.1177/0169796X0301900208; Ashley Dawson, “Another Country: The Postcolonial State,
Environmentality, and the Landless People’s Movement,” in Democracy, States, and the
Struggle for Global Justice, ed. Heather D. Gautney, Neil Smith, Omar Dahbour, and Ashley
Dawson (New York: Routledge, 2008), 239.
11 Dipesh Chakrabarty, “Marx after Marxism: Subaltern Histories and the Question of Difference,”
Polygraph 6/7 (1993): 10–16, www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/4399780.pdf; Spivak, “Haverstock
Hill,” 26.
12 Dawson, “Another Country,” 241; Fanelli and Sarzynsky, “Concept,” 334–6.
13 Stefano Liberti, Land Grabbing: Journeys in the New Colonialism (New York: Verso, 2011).
14 Spivak, “New Subaltern,” 326.
15 Spivak, “New Subaltern,” 330; Chatterjee, “Democracy,” 197–205.
16 Since most underground economic activities are engaged in various forms of market exchange,
here I refer primarily not to underground economic enterprises but to non-market forms of
production and exchange that pervade capitalism but are often overlooked by economists: J.K.
Gibson-Graham, A Postcapitalist Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006),
53–100; Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, “Ch’ixinakax utixwa: A Reflection on the Practices and
Discourses of Decolonization,” South Atlantic Quarterly 111, no. 1 (Winter 2012): 96–9, doi:
10.1215/ 00382876–1472612.
17 Spivak, “New Subaltern,” 326.
18 Ibid., 326–8.
19 Chatterjee, “Democracy,” 202.
20 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Marxism and the Interpretation of
Culture, ed. Lawrence Grossberg and Cary Nelson (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988):
309–12; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Resistance That Cannot Be Recognized as Such,” in
Conversations with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ed. Swapan Chakravorty, Suzana Milevska,
and Tani E. Barlow (New York: Seagull Books, 2006), 62–3, 70–8; Rosalind C. Morris,
“Introduction,” in Can the Subaltern Speak? Reflections on the History of an Idea, ed. Rosalind
Morris (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 3–7; María Josefina Saldaña-Portillo,
“No Time for Old Mexicans: The Collision of Empires on the Texas Frontier,” Interventions 13,
no. 1 (2011): 74–6, 80–4.
21 Mark Sanders, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: Live Theory (London: Continuum, 2006), 16–18.
22 Gayatri Spivak, “Subaltern Talk: Interview with the Editors,” in The Spivak Reader, ed. Donna
Landry and Gerald Maclean (New York: Routledge, 1996), 306; Gayatri Spivak, “In Response,”
in Can the Subaltern Speak? Reflections on the History of an Idea, ed. Rosalind C. Morris (New
York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 233. The focus on the act of hearing speech acts and
working to give them institutional traction is an important point of difference found between
subaltern studies and much public sphere and discourse theory. In discourse studies and public
sphere approaches, speech and voice metaphors reign supreme, but little attention is given to
embodied practices or material outcomes that respond to subaltern and other marginalized
speech. Even some who are critical of modern liberal democratic theory neglect to focus on the
impacts of speech by silenced groups; for example, Noëlle McAfee, Democracy and the
Political Unconscious (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 64–6.
23 Saldaña-Portillo, “No Time,” 80–4; Jean Franco, “Moving from Subalternity,” in Can the
Subaltern Speak? Reflections on the History of an Idea, ed. Rosalind Morris (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2010), 213–17; Spivak, “In Response,” 225–30; Gayatri
Chakravorty Spivak, “More on Power/Knowledge,” in Outside in the Teaching Machine (New
York: Routledge, 1993), 43–51.
24 Emergence out of the subaltern spaces blocked from access to mobility by hegemonic
institutions becomes the constructive crisis of the subaltern, whereby former subalterns instead
come into full citizenship in democratic nations that have heretofore denied them institutional
 rights and secular freedoms: Spivak, “Power/Knowledge,” 45. Such projects invite us to give
attention to the distant but necessary horizon of the end of exploitation (Gayatri Chakravorty
Spivak, “Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography,” in The Spivak Reader, ed. Donna
Landry and Gerald Maclean (New York: Routledge, 1996), 214–15). The time on this horizon
might be conceived as the time when all subalterns have been brought into the circuit of
parliamentary democracy, the moment when subaltern space is undone and can no longer be
inhabited demographically: Spivak, “Subaltern Talk,” 307; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak,
“Foreword,” in Other Asias (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008), 4. This move beyond
the limits of modern language and notions of the “real,” outside the travesties of modern
institutions such as the nation state and juridical apparatuses, invites a displacement of
Enlightenment assumptions and practices.
25 Franco, “Moving,” 218–22.
26 Spivak, “In Response,” 228, 233–5.
27 Spivak, “Popular,” 437, 440–1; Spivak, “In Response,” 233.
28 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Death of a Discipline (New York: Columbia University Press,
2003), 69, 101–2.
29 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “1996: Foucault and Najibullah,” in Other Asias (Malden, MA:
Blackwell Publishing, 2008), 149, quoting Paulo Freire, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New
York: Seabury Press, 1968), 29–31.
30 Spivak, Death, 52–3.
31 Wignaraja, “Rethinking,” 7.
32 Spivak makes this point in a well-known article, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” where she suggests
that a blockage or aporia is caused by the assumptions of Eurocentric, liberal Enlightenment
humanism: “Subaltern Speak,” 306.
33 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the
Vanishing Present (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 430.
34 For Spivak’s discussion of this practice as a form of catachresis, what has been termed in this
project “misnaming,” see Spivak, “Power/Knowledge,” 26, 29, 37.
35 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Neocolonialism and the Secret Agent of Knowledge, an Interview
with Robert J.C. Young,” Neocolonialism, Oxford Literary Review 13 (1991): 29–30,
http://robertjcyoung.com/Spivakneocolonialism.pdf, accessed October 25, 2011.
36 Sanders, Spivak, 92.
37 Chakrabarty, “Marx,” 15.
38 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Righting Wrongs – 2002: Accessing Democracy among the
Aboriginals,” in Other Asias (Blackwell Publishing, 2008), 35–7, 39–41.
39 Guha, “Historiography,” 40–1; Ponna Wignaraja, “Rethinking Development and Democracy,” in
New Social Movements in the South: Empowering the People, ed. Ponna Wignaraja (Atlantic
Highlands: Zed Books, 1993), 18–21.
40 Wignaraja, “Rethinking Development,” 20–1.
41 Ibid., 21.
42 Chakrabarty, “Marx,” 13–14.
43 Armory Starr, María Elena Martínez-Torres, and Peter Rosset, “Participatory Democracy in
Action: Practices of the Zapatistas and the Movimento Sem Terra,” Latin American Perspectives
38, no. 1 (January 2011): 102–19, http://lap.sagepub.com/content/38/1/102.full.pdf; Fanelli and
Sarzynsky, “Concept,” 342–4.
44 Ibid., 346–9.
45 Friends of the MST, “History of the MST,” mstbrazil.org/about-mst/history, accessed November
12, 2015.
46 Ibid.
47 Sue Branford and Jan Rocha, Cutting the Wire: The Story of the Landless Movement in Brazil
(London: Latin American Bureau, 2002), 254.
48 Fanelli and Sarzynski, “Concept,” 335–8.
49 Ibid., 338–9.
50 Ibid., 349–50.
51 Ibid., 348.
52 Ibid., 348–50, 354, 357.
53 Pastoral Land Commission, “Conflitos No Campo,”
www.cptnacional.org.br/index.php/publicacoes/conflitos-no-campo-brasil, accessed March 22,
2016.
54 Jonathan Watts, “Brazil’s Bolsa Familia Scheme Marks a Decade of Pioneering Poverty Relief,”
Guardian, December 17, 2014, www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/dec/17/brazil-
bolsa-familia-decade-anniversary-poverty-relief, accessed March 28, 2016.
55 Jonathan Watts, “Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement Renews Protest on 30th Anniversary,”
Guardian, February 13, 2014, www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/feb/13/brazil-
landless-workers-movement-mst-protest-30th-anniversary, accessed March 28, 2016.
56 “History of the MST.”
57 Branford and Rocha, Cutting the Wire, 114.
58 Ibid., 252.
59 Ibid., 114.
60 Ibid., 252–3.
61 Ibid., 253.
62 Ibid., 253–4.
63 Ibid., 254.
64 Ibid., 251.
65 Ibid., 97–8.
66 Ibid., 34–40, 259.
67 Ibid., 258–60.
68 Ibid., 261–3.
69 Ibid., 255.
70 Ibid., 121.
71 Ibid., 112–16.
72 Ibid., 119–20, 124.
73 Watts, “Bolsa Familia.”
74 Michael Kontopodis, “Landless Movement, Materiality and Radical Politics in Brazil,” Espirito
Santo: A Multimedia Anthropological Scape,
www.academia.edu/1062407/Landless_Movement_Materiality_and_Radical_Politics_in_Brazil
_Espirito_Santo_A_Multimedia_Anthropological_Scape, 9, accessed March 28, 2016.
75 Kontopodis, “Landless Movement,” 8.
76 Daniela Issa, “Praxis of Empowerment: Mística and Mobilization in Brazil’s Landless Rural
Workers’ Movement,” in Latin American Social Movements in the Twenty-First Century:
Resistance, Power, and Democracy, ed. Richard Stahler-Sholk, Glen David Kuecker, and Harry
E. Vanden (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008), 139–40.
77 Ibid., 135–6.
78 Ibid., 135, 139–40.
79 Ibid., 137.
80 Ibid., 137.
81 Ibid., 137.
82 Ibid., 138.
83 Ibid., 145.
 “Organización Frente Popular Francisco Villa Izquierda Independiente,”
84 https://ofpfviiblog.wordpress.com/, accessed September 9, 2015. Many thanks to Tony Nelson
for bringing this organization to my attention, and to Enrique Reynoso and Bárbara Súarez
Galeano for introducing me to their work.
85 Wignaraja, “Rethinking,” 11.
86 Ibid., 20.
87 Wignaraja, “Rethinking,” 11; Mahasveta Devi, Dust on the Road: The Activist Writings of
Mahasweta Devi, ed. Maitreya Ghatak Calcutta: (Seagull Books, 1997), 96–106, 186–94.
88 Wignaraja, “Rethinking,” 11–12.
89 Wignaraja, “Rethinking,” 6–7; David Scott, “Colonial Governmentality,” Social Text 43
(Autumn, 1995): 193–205, http://cscs.res.in/dataarchive/textfiles/textfile.2008-07-
22.7869937408/file; Ngugi Wa Th’iongo, Detained: A Writer’s Prison Diary (Exeter, NH:
Heinemann, 1981); Margaret Kohn and Keally D. McBride, Political Theories of
Decolonization: Postcolonialism and the Problem of Foundations (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2011), 55–61, 68–76.
90 Vandana Shiva, Monocultures of the Mind (London: Zed Books/Third World Network, 1993),
9–64.
91 Deepa Dhanraj, Sudesha, Faust Films, 1983.
92 Sri Wulandari, “Organizing Strategies for Informal Economy Workers,” Asia Monitor
Resources, June 3, 2009, 10, 17,
http://old.amrc.org.hk/booksale/booksale/organizing_strategies_for_informal_economy_workers
, accessed March 22, 2016.
93 Ibid., 7.
94 Ibid., 10.
95 Ibid., 8.
96 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “The Practical Politics of the Open End,” in The Postcolonial
Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues, ed. Sarah Harasym (New York: Routledge, 1990), 104.
97 Spivak, “Popular,” 475.
98 Wulandari, “Strategies,” 10.
99 Partha Chatterjee, The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the
World (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 3–4, 53–80.
100 Wulandari, “Strategies,” 10.
101 Chatterjee Politics, 3–4, 60–76; Devi, Dust, 146–63.
102 Wulandari, “Strategies,” 7.
103 Sangtin Writers, “Still Playing with Fire: Intersectionality, Activism and NGOs Feminism,” in
Critical Transnational Feminist Praxis, ed. Amanda Lock Swarr and Richa Nagar (Albany, NY:
SUNY Press, 2010), 128–9.
104 Ibid., 130–2.
105 Ibid., 128–30.
106 Ibid., 130.
107 Ibid., 130, 132, 136–8.
108 Ibid., 139.
109 Ibid., 139.
110 Ibid., 134–8.
111 Ibid., 141.
112 Harsh Sethi, “Action Groups in the New Politics,” in New Social Movements in the South:
Empowering the People, ed. Ponna Wignaraja (Atlantic Highlands: Zed Books, 1993), 239–44.
113 See various MFC newsletters from 2011–13 and other years:
www.mfcindia.org/main/bulletins.html, accessed April 20, 2016.
114 “Medico Friend Circle Structure,” www.mfcindia.org/main/structure.html, accessed April 20,
2016.
115 Medico Friend Circle, “Moving towards a System for UAHC in India,” Medico Friend Circle
Bulletin 345–7, February–July 2011, www.mfcindia.org/mfcpdfs/2011-.html, accessed April 21,
2016.
116 Priya Ritu, “UAHC with ‘Community Participations’ Or ‘People Centre-Stage’? Implications
for Governance, Provisioning and Financing,” Medico Friend Circle Bulletin 345, no. 7
(February–July, 2011), 9, www.mfcindia.org/mfcpdfs/MCF345-347.pdf, accessed April 20,
2016.
117 Sethi, “Action Groups,” 241–4.
118 Ibid., 244.
119 Ibid., 239–44.
120 Chatterjee, Politics, 4.
121 Chatterjee, Politics, 49; Ehsan Zaffar, “The History and Continuing Influence of Pakistan’s
Lawyers’ Movement,” Muftah, December 23, 2010, http://muftah.org/the-history-and-
continuing-influence-of-pakistans-lawyers-movement-by-ehsan-zaffar/#.Vyepjr7rgnN, accessed
May 1, 2016.
122 Devi, Dust, viii–xi.
123 Eric Ritskes, “The Terms of Engagement with Indigenous Nationhood,” Decolonization:
Indigeneity, Education and Society, January 17, 2013,
https://decolonization.wordpress.com/2013/01/17/the-terms-of-engagement-with-indigenous-
nationhood/, accessed May 1, 2016; Robinder Kaur Sehdev, “Lessons from the Bridge: On the
Possibilities of Anti-Racist Feminist Alliances in Indigenous Spaces,” in This is an Honour
Song: Twenty Years since the Blockades, ed. Leanne Simpson and Kiera Ladner (Winnipeg MB:
Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 2010), 117–20.
124 Devi, Dust, xi–xii; Wanda Nanibush, “Love and Other Resistances: Responding to
Kahnesasatàke through Artistic Practice,” in This is an Honour Song: Twenty Years since the
Blockades, ed. Leanne Simpson and Kiera Ladner (Winnipeg MB: Arbeiter Ring Publications,
2010), 165–74.
125 Academics in Solidarity, “Academics in Solidarity with Chief Spence and Idle No More,” in The
Winter We Danced: Voices from the Past, the Future, and the Idle No More Movement, ed. Kino-
nda-niimi Collective (Winnipeg MB: ARP Press, 2014), 230–5; Spivak, Death, 25–70; Spivak,
“Haverstock Hill,” 26–30.
126 Sangtin Writers, “Playing with Fire,” 130–4.
127 Harsha Walia, “Decolonizing Together: Moving beyond a Politics of Solidarity toward a
Practice of Decolonization,” BriarPatch Magazine, January 1, 2012,
https://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/decolonizing-together, accessed October 12, 2015.
128 Juan Velásquez Atehortúa, “Barrio Women’s Invited and Invested Spaces against Urban
Elitisation in Venezuela,” Antipode 46, no. 3 (2014): 843, doi: 10.1111/ anti.12072, accessed
May 1, 2016.
129 Velásquez Atehortúa, “Barrio,” 840; Sara Motta, “We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For:
The Feminization of Resistance in Venezuela,” Latin American Perspectives 40, no. 4 (July
2013): 35–54, doi: 10.1177/0094582X13485706, accessed May 1, 2016; James Holston,
“Insurgent Citizenship in an Era of Global Urban Peripheries,” City and Society 21, no. 2
(2009): 245–51, doi: 10.1111/j.1548–744X.2009.01024.x, accessed May 1, 2016.
130 Motta, “Waiting,” 46.
131 Ibid.
132 Ibid.
133 Ibid.
134 Ibid.
135 Ibid.
136 Ibid., 50, 51n2.
137 Velásquez Atehortúa, “Barrio,” 843.
138 Ibid., 841–2.
139 Motta, “Waiting,” 42.
140 Velásquez Atehortúa, “Barrio,” 843.
141 Ibid., 843.
142 Motta, “Waiting,” 47.
143 Velásquez Atehortúa, “Barrio,” 843.
144 Ibid., 40.
145 Ibid.
146 Motta, “Waiting,” 48.
147 Velásquez Atehortúa, “Barrio,” 845.
148 Arjun Appadurai, Fear of Small Numbers (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006).
149 Velásquez Atehortúa, “Barrio,” 840.
150 Motta, “Waiting,” 35.
151 Ibid., 49–50.
152 Yuderkys Espinosa Miñoso, “Etnocentrismo y colonialidad en los feminismos latinoamericanos:
Complicidades y consolidación de las hegemonías feministas en el espacio transnacional,” in
Tejiendo de otro modo: Feminismo, epistemología y apuestas descoloniales en Abya Yala, ed.
Yuderkys Espinosa Miñoso, Diana Gómez Correal, and Karina Ochoa Muñoz (Popoyán,
Columbia: Editorial Universidad del Cauca, 2014), 312, 322.
153 Espinosa Miñoso, “Colonialidad,” 322.
154 Spivak, “In Response,” 231.
155 Spivak, “Popular,” 430–2. The argument Spivak develops here for the subaltern as a “position
without identity” replaces her earlier use of strategic essentialism that proved so popular.

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4 Popular Democracies
Popular Equality in Practice

Fears of the surging mobs of popular movements have given rise to some of
the most important arguments against practices that promote equality. When
hundreds of thousands of people join a movement protest or mass meeting,
the basis of democratic claims to represent all suddenly shifts from abstract
idea to physical presence and visual spectacle. Whether it be the 2011
crowds in Cairo’s Tahrir Square or Madrid’s Puerta del Sol Square, the
1998 streets of Jakarta, or the 1963 march on Washington, the sudden
emergence into public view of “the people” signals that the claim to the will
of the people by the elected government is troubled or false.
These moments are often when organizations and social movements
emerge that prefer more equal social relations to those that the modern state
allows. These moments remind us that the democratic claim to capture the
will of the people in policy has high stakes, and that electoral democracies
are not the only way to give form to the will of the people. Electoral
democracies take Election Day as their orderly stand-in for the rabble, the
site for producing a record of accountability for elected leaders to “the
people.” Popular democracy is often critical of, or even rejects, elections.
Sometimes, as we will see here, they demand active participation for all
under conditions that often differ markedly from those of electoral
democracy.
In states where dictators and other authoritarian regimes may be found,
the attacks against popular movements can take the form of threats of
deadly violence. Unlike in the countries of Argentina and Spain, discussed
below, which are both representative democracies, democratic movements
also emerge locally under dictatorships and other authoritarian
governments. In much of Latin America, popular movements1 promote
social justice and the common good by acting as something like organized
representatives of those who are not adequately represented by their
government, whether or not their government is elected. These movements
take the form of rural worker associations, agricultural cooperatives, private
and public labor unions, teachers’ unions, student groups, women’s and
refugee organizations, community associations from marginalized social
sectors and locales, human rights groups, political prisoner organizations,
Christian congregations, and sometimes environmental organizations as
well.2
Large numbers of people joining a movement or making time to
participate suggest that “the people” have spoken against the current state of
affairs, and that “everybody” wants certain changes. This thinking is
deployed by supporters of popular movements to characterize their
movements as eruptions of collective agency and action in a sea of
cultivated passivity,3 or as the underside of democracy that constitutes
democracy even as it disrupts “normal” electoral procedures.4 Yet, these
claims may raise more questions than they answer. Organizers dedicated to
mass movements assume that a successful movement must mobilize large
sectors of the middle classes, who are often present in significant numbers
at large marches and meetings, in order to gain “respectability.”5 Does a
movement gain traction only when it can mobilize large numbers of the
middle class or the working class? How, then, will governance be held
accountable to the unemployed, the underemployed, the unemployable, the
subaltern, the mountain swidden practitioner, the rural subsistence farmer
not subjected to wage markets, and other Others of capitalism? There are
many ways to draw large numbers into involvement, and not all of them
produce participation in self-governance as an outcome.6 For this reason, I
use the term “popular democracy” to name egalitarian practices that hold
governance practices accountable to the common good, to all.7
Sometimes, the openings and entry points to participation may disrupt
particular assumptions about the nation as a body politic. This may occur
when participants seem Other to what is identified with the clean, uniformly
homogeneous bodies of wealthy elites, often so-called “leaders,” and the
middle classes. A tendency in some quarters to emphasize “the people” as
the “proper” subject for democracy can also produce a body politic that
eliminates many humans and other embodied subjects from the sphere of
the democratic.8
 Attention to difference may instead allow into the realm of possible
democracies practices found among the unclean,9 the starving, the
stumbling, the addled, the addicted, the insane, the imprisoned, the
homeless, the exiled, the dark-skinned, the Indigenous, the squint-eyed,10
ancestors, haunts and haints, the half-dead, the unborn, those who never
speak, those who are never heard, the unrecognizable, the deaf or disabled,
the immigrant, the long gone, and the never present.11 If democracy is not
always closely tied to the middle classes and workers under capitalism, as it
often is in modern, European-style electoral democracies, then democracy
may take as its center groups who rarely have access to power in unequal
state democracies. Many popular social movements have just such groups at
their center, particularly in the global North.
Yet, identity-based movements are not the only form of difference at
work in popular movements. We will see later in the chapter how important
it is to refuse demographic categories to determine who are the people12 if
the democratic “we” is to remain open. Yet, at certain times, the “we” may
seem to require closure, not only when voter registration closes but also
when enemies infiltrate the assembly, as we will see below, or when
violence is directed at groups practicing equality, as we have seen above.13
Learning the complex requirements of openness to difference and closure
needed to survive hostile environments is how equality in practice has
survived in a sea of modern citizens claiming democracy yet hostile to
equality.
Popular movements may be seen as positive events, in which large
numbers of people demand what they want from their homeland
institutions, or they may be attacked as somehow not being valid actors on
the public stage. Attacks directed at popular movements may be found in
both democratic and authoritarian histories. So, when elected leaders
propose policies that reduce taxes on the poor or budget price supports for
such staple items as food or gasoline, those policies may be attacked as
populist even in nations where the poor make up the majority of the
population and would benefit from the policies. Political and social elites
have long attacked the legitimacy of governance practices that would level
the playing field and remove them from their positions of privileged access
to the levers of power. As we saw in Chapter 1, elites have demonized
popular practices, wielding the charge of “populism” in an attempt to link
them with the sins of violence, the destruction of order and justice, and
anything else that elites think will sway the mass of people who they
imagine are their audience.
Yet, political elites hurling charges of “populist” may have reason for
concern. Nonviolent popular movements have overthrown colonial
governments, most famously in India and Ghana, and overthrown military
dictatorships in Greece in 1973–4; Thailand in 1973 and 2005; Portugal in
1974–5; and Indonesia in 1998, among others in the post-World War II
period alone. Elected governments have also been overthrown by unarmed
mass movements in the Philippines in 1986; in Thailand in 1991 and 2011;
and in Tunisia and Egypt in the 2011 period sometimes known as the Arab
Spring, among others.14
The charge of populism has been disputed by participants in the
movements targeted by political and social elites, and by political theorists
of various stripes and other activists. For many participants, the charge of
populism may be a red flag, suggesting that such attacks give political elites
a cover, a reason to ignore what many people want in favor of policies that
benefit elites.15 However, we will see below that assuming that the “many”
are some sort of stand-in for “the people” at times produces exclusions and
other things that need to be questioned.16 Those who support popular
movements also run the risk of complicity with the inequality produced by
electoral systems, since policies determined by elected leaders are often the
focus of mass movements. For this reason, we will consider two sites where
participatory democracy focuses on nonelectoral goals. And finally, the
move towards collective action requires a certain difficulty in working with
difference, as the multiple, perhaps overlapping but often divergent,
demands and interests converge into the collective that acts.17
In this chapter, we will explore some social movements that claim to
promote democracy in order to explore popular forms of democracy.18 We
will begin with some brief considerations of different notions of populism
and the relation between democracy and autonomy. After introducing some
of the main arguments promoted by political and social elites against
popular democratic practices, we will then take a look at some specific
practices from our own day and examine what they mean by democracy and
how they put it into practice. We will also discuss the options available to
mass movements that choose to intervene or even overthrow their state
governments and those that choose other routes, such as building
autonomous spaces or projects with hybrid goals.
 We have seen in previous chapters that some equalized practices have
focused on changing their state governments while others have focused
their work on their own affairs. While this is a recurring issue we will see
frequently throughout the book, it has retained particular importance for
popular movements. Some of the popular movements we will examine in
this chapter have promoted change in state policies, as did the 15-M in
Spain. Others have instead focused their work on producing their own
autonomous spheres of influence within the territorial boundaries of the
modern state, as many have done in Argentina since the events of 2001.
Still others have worked at smaller scales, inviting us to consider what
“popular” might mean beyond the numerical, the demographic, the body
count.
The question of who are the “people” of democracy, the demos, has been
a contentious topic of debate. Early constitutions often limited “the people”
to those owning property or recognizable as belonging to certain gendered
or racialized groups, leading to long struggles over membership in the
national body and the right to vote. In many of the communities we will
examine shortly, membership is conferred through other means besides a
constitution, such as presence at assemblies or a shared demand or goal.
The struggle over what “the people” say is precisely what is debated in
democratic spaces,19 so such claims often require attention to the limits of
those discussions as they are shaped in particular histories. In electoral
democracies, polls and news media reports may claim to identify what “the
people” want, but we will see in the popular movements discussed in this
chapter that there are other ways to investigate their views. Rather than
assume we know who “the people” are, three different sites for egalitarian
practice discussed below suggest that asking the question “Who are we?” or
“How many are we?” is an important part of egalitarian practice.
For those not focused on changing state policy, one popular way to name
their horizontal social practices found in these movement is as “autonomy.”
This term suggests independence, such as independence from an orthodox
or normative way of living or from the state. In the sites discussed in this
chapter, popular autonomy movements often work to transform not only
relations of communities with the nation state but also relations within the
movement and participating communities, ethnic groups, and Indigenous
groups. As a result, some communities come to perceive cultural and
socioeconomic inequalities (such as gender relations) that had not
previously been questioned as a result of discrimination and exclusion, and
work to transform those inequalities.20
While in some circles autonomy has been used to describe individuals,21
here the emphasis will be on communities and organizations that practice
this form of independence. Yet, in communities, the term is used in very
different ways. For Indigenous groups, autonomy is sometimes used as a
formal term to designate territory under some sort of formal sovereignty
granted to Indigenous peoples by the modern state, as is found in China,
India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Chile, Bolivia, Australia, Spain, and other
nations.22 Many Indigenous communities also use the term “autonomy” to
mean self-determination. For example, here is how one official
spokesperson of the Zapatista movement characterized autonomy:

[W]e then began encouraging the autonomous rebel zapatista

municipalities – which is how the peoples are organized in order to
govern and to govern themselves – in order to make themselves
stronger. This method of autonomous government was not simply
invented by the EZLN, but rather it comes from several centuries of
indigenous resistance and from the zapatistas’ own experience. It is the
self-governance of the communities. In other words, no one from
outside comes to govern, but the peoples themselves decide, among
themselves, who governs and how, and, if they do not obey, they are
removed.23

The concept of self-determination by Indigenous communities does not

always imply that the community has transformed its internal relations into
egalitarian practice. However, in some of the Indigenous communities
already discussed in the last chapter, autonomy does mean equality in
practice. For example, the Zapatista approach requires a specific approach
to action:

[W]hat [the autonomous authorities] propose has to be approved by the

people, by the communities … whether that’s at the zone level, in the
Junta de Buen Gobierno, the MAREZ, the Zapatista Autonomous
Municipalities in Rebellion, or at the level of the local authorities….
They cannot begin or launch any project or work without informing
and consulting the thousands of men and women.24
Not all Indigenous communities are horizontal in their governance
practices, however.
When the term “autonomy” is used in Europe, it often suggests a
rejection of elected representative government by political parties,
particularly the centralized hierarchies of authoritarian party formations.25
In Latin America, the term has sometimes been used to name community
practices that respond to state failures to provide basic needs for their
people, as we have already seen in Mexico, Argentina, and Peru.26 Both of
these last two uses often suggest transformations of social relations within
the community or organization into more equal practices. These last two
uses also may at times overlap in emerging transnational and even global
movements, as discussed in the next chapter.
So, what does autonomy look like? One overview suggests that
autonomy is a form of cooperation that allows independence from market
capitalism and the inequalities of the modern state:

Autonomy as a political trait of cooperation is … an orientation to

concrete developments that begin from the powers themselves …
without … being expropriated by the … state and capital…. [T]he
production of the common … is the struggle against racism and
colonialism … but … also the re-appropriation of natural resources,
public services, and the symbolic position of the communitarian in
political life.27

Another view contrasts autonomous popular movements with “the practices

of the institutional left, rejecting representative democracy and majority
rule.” Instead, autonomy works at “defending more participatory models,
based on direct democracy and self-governance, horizontal
(nonhierarchical) structures, decision-making through consensus (if
possible and necessary), in the forum of an assembly (usually open), and
rarely with permanent delegations of responsibility.”28
Autonomy movements in Latin America, Europe, and other sites often
share an interest in seeking autonomy from the unequal organizational
structure of both the state and political parties. Women are often found in
prominent roles, and the movements may commonly reclaim educational
institutions using new types of knowledge to train their communities and
their own intellectuals in self-organizing. The educational work is linked to
revaluing the culture and identity of the people and social sectors that have
been de facto excluded from citizenship in ways that produce inequality and
divisions in modern society. They often live out autonomy in spaces
recuperated from capitalist private property relations through various legal
and extralegal means, such as occupations or squatting, as we have seen in
other chapters. These movements often link political autonomy to material
autonomy, providing their own subsistence and other production through a
minimal division of labor and taking care of the environment, refusing
Taylorist workplace organization that separates leaders from bases.29 In this
sense of autonomy, the communities and movements achieve independence
from surrounding practices and assumptions that have made producing
equality difficult.

Argentinian Popular Democracy

The mid-December, 2001 decision of the Argentinian government to freeze

all bank accounts produced a widespread rejection of the elected
representative government of the day, and a mass movement of those who
joined the “pot banging” public protest (cacerolazo) to show their refusal of
their elected leaders’ decision.30 Five different governments fell in quick
succession as this popular uprising continued. The pot bangers drew on
rural strikes protesting unemployment from the mid-1990s known as
piquetes to interrupt political business as usual by blocking roads and
bridges.31 As an outcome, many participants devoted most of their energies
to building local horizontal governance structures instead of focusing solely
on the electoral state and its leaders. In neighborhood assemblies, unions of
the unemployed, factory and printing press takeovers, and schools, bakeries,
farms, and clinics, among other sites, the participants continued their
equalized self-governance for years, and in some cases even today. A
number of these groups have survived into the present, and still use the
assembly process and consensus decision-making to allow broad-based
participation and ensure that all feel heard and respected.
Like the other specific equalizing practices we have seen in past chapters,
the historical context for the 2001 popular movements shaped the ways in
which the mass uprising unfolded. The well-known disappearances and
assassinations of tens of thousands under the military dictatorship in the
1970s and early 1980s were the topic of social movements emerging in the
1990s to break the silence surrounding the disappeared family members.
Unlike the better-known Mothers of the Disappeared (Madres de la Plaza de
Mayo), who primarily petitioned the government for recourse and
information, two of these groups deployed the direct participation and
horizontal organizing strategies that would become so widespread after
2001. The first was HIJOS (children)—children, nephews, nieces, and other
relations of the disappeared—and the other was the Street Artists Group
(Grupo de Arte Callejero, GAC). With little confidence in the government,
both organizations spoke directly to the public through visual art on street
corners and buildings, and street performances organized through
widespread participation in decentralized networks.32 These groups did not
follow the approach of Peronist political parties, which renewed their
activities after the return to electoral democracy from military dictatorship
in the 1980s, pursuing the paternalist and clientelist relations of many in
Argentina to the government.33 The participatory practices of HIJOS and
GAC, which spread so successfully after 2001, have their origins in council
processes found in traditional Indigenous customs and in anarchist
traditions in Argentina.34
The most widespread practices of equal social relations in the months
directly after December, 2001 were found in neighborhood assemblies,
often on street corners or in the street itself, with dozens to hundreds of
participants standing in a circle, looking at each other, and talking and
listening to each other’s desires, needs, and plans.35 As the months and
years passed, these neighborhood assemblies began organizing schools,
health clinics, media outlets, and barter networks to meet their community
needs, expanding their range of activities while drawing on community
skills. The many unemployed during the hard times in the 2000s also
formed organizations, as did many cultural, artistic, and media groups.36
As the unemployed sought means of subsistence, they began to take over
factories, farms, hotels, printing and publishing outlets, schools, and other
enterprises and buildings that had been abandoned or collapsed due to
economic difficulties.37 In workplaces, these years saw participants drawing
on a long global tradition of equality in workers’ councils, stretching back
to the Paris Commune of 1871 and Russian workers in 1905 and 1917, and
workers’ struggles during the 1920s in Spain, Ireland, and China and in the
postwar period in Hungary, Chile, Iran, and Italy. These long-established
practices often used deliberative assemblies of workers to carry out self-
management and direct worker control of the workplace, rather than ceding
control to management as unions generally do; region-wide councils to
network for support; recallable delegates; and elections for higher decision-
making bodies to coordinate with other workers’ councils. As can be seen
from the use of electoral practices, workers’ councils historically developed
approaches that combined participatory assemblies with elections, and
experimented with different strategies for retaining accountability to the
assemblies.38
In Argentina early in the twenty-first century, the great majority of
horizontal groups used assemblies, where full participation in discussions
for all present was the norm for the meetings, and consensus of all
participants was the decision-making practice.39 In these settings, there is a
high level of interest in making decisions together, and those who do not
follow this practice will be informed that they must change their behavior to
remain a part of the community.40 Various mechanisms were developed to
train those who were not familiar with horizontal participation, and
sometimes the groups would sing the song of the movement together to
produce reflection on the reasons for the gathering and a sense of unity.41
Monthly assemblies of all workers characterize these practices at the Zanon
ceramics factory south of Buenos Aires, a factory reclaimed by its workers
and renamed Fasinpat, short for “Fábrica Sin Patrón” (Factory without
Owner). The assemblies are the site for discussion of all topics—what they
will manufacture; workplace ground rules; purchases; any activist actions
needed—and every member participates. Monthly reports on expenditures
provide transparency to the workers, who manage their own affairs.42
Direct confrontations with the electoral party system occurred in early
and mid-2002, when neighborhood assembly networks attempted to meet in
public spaces, such as parks, in order to coordinate the work of the many
local neighborhood assemblies. In these public spaces, political party
members began to openly entice or forcefully encourage participants into
party membership or to work secretly to divert and disrupt the meetings.43
Participants in the assemblies developed various strategies to combat these
interventions, which were more or less successful. Ultimately, these
electoral party-based interventions reduced the effectiveness of the
networks to the point that they ceased to meet, even while the local
neighborhood assemblies often continued meeting. This is one clear
indicator that the popular democracy in Argentina was directly opposed to
at least some elements of the electoral party system, competing for
members and legitimacy.
As the neighborhood assemblies and unemployed unions developed
schools, health clinics, housing, and infrastructure for other basic needs,44
they entered into the activities traditionally monopolized by the state or
private enterprises. In this way, the Argentinian egalitarian organizations
embarked on what some call autonomy, replacing the government’s
functions with their own activities. As outlined in the discussion of
autonomy above, these activities establish parallel systems of governance
and networks of resources that compete with both the state and the capitalist
marketplace. This development, which may often be seen in communities
where there is little sense that the state is accountable to the community,
displaces the state from the center of politics.
Practicing equality is not without its challenges, as we have seen
consistently through the preceding chapters. Gender disparities often
became apparent to participants, since women were generally among the
most active and led much of the organizing, yet were not always chosen for
public speaking or other leadership roles, and often quotas were used to
disrupt this form of inequality and produce a more fully equalized space.45
Leadership in the context of consensus building may take forms that would
surprise those accustomed to centralized, hierarchical organizations and
other relations. These forms emphasize listening skills and those who can
summarize many different viewpoints in such a way that all will agree.46
Safeguards are put into place to ensure that those who take on the
responsibility to speak for the group do so in a way that remains
accountable to their neighbors or fellow unemployed union members in
different ways: sending two “listeners” to accompany the person who
speaks or negotiates on the group’s behalf; and having the person who
spoke or negotiated remain silent while her companions report back to the
group or community on how the presentation or negotiation went.47 These
and other safeguards are important attempts to ensure equality in situations
where those not familiar with equality in practice might attempt to act in
ways that produce unequal relations.
As people have worked to develop social relationships that do not
reproduce the unequal social relations that typify modern economic and
political structures, the Argentinian state has pursued a policy of
demobilizing these forms of egalitarian practice. As state authorities have
determined that people organizing autonomous spaces are a challenge to
state governance, they have pursued policies including direct payment of
participants to lure them into other activities, invitations to participate in
state agencies, physical evictions from occupied land and buildings, and
physical encounters deploying the police and military forces and, in some
cases, the murder of activists.48 While they were not paid directly by the
state, members of the political parties invested in the state electoral
democratic tradition attacked the neighborhood networks and were able to
successfully reduce their effectiveness.
Democracy centers on participation in the assembly in these Buenos
Aires urban, suburban, and rural settings, with care taken to safeguard
accountability to the participatory decisions when representatives and even
elections are also used. One aspect of difference at work in the post-2001
setting is found between those willing to commit to the Other of centralized,
unequal organizational practices over the long term, and to transform
unequal social relations into horizontal, participatory decision-making
practices, and those who do not make this commitment. This difference is
found at multiple sites: individual relations, the neighborhood, the
workplace, and others. While not all organizations that emerged out of the
events of 2001 are horizontal in social relations, and not all that emerged
continue into the present day, the Argentinian record is impressively
durable. By renewing themselves periodically, some of the organizations
continue to this day to produce material goods as well as horizontal
relations, education for a new generation of participants, and health care for
their participants, strengthening their countermeasures to inequality as they
continue the work.
In addition to this structural difference from electoral democracy, a sign
that this democratic practice refuses any reduction to modern state
democracy is the emphasis on love and trust.49 As one participant in an
unemployed workers’ assembly called La Matanza remarked,

There are many compañeros … with distinct positions and ideas, but
this is not a problem in any way since we love each other…. Imagine
being in a neighborhood like La Matanza, which is full of really tough
men, men who have lived and still live a violent, macho life, and we’re
 talking about new loving relationships…. There’s a huge desire to all
be together in the movement and to continue creating together.50

A woman from the unemployed association known as MTD Solano

remarked that after she met her neighbors during the turbulent events of late
2001, they started to love each other as neighbors and “discovered that we
are a lot happier when we were confronting the crisis together, and a new
potential developed.”51 In these ways, the Argentine assembly practices
produce affective relations through participation together, relations that do
not result from the specific voting process, campaign fundraising, and other
democratic mechanisms that characterize the modern state. So, in practice
and in their effects, the post-2001 forms of equality practiced in Argentina
reconfigures democracy in ways not captured by the modern electoral state.

15-M in Spain

On May 15, 2011, people gathered in a central square in Madrid, and within
days other gatherings were mobilized in city and town plazas in over fifty
locations in Spain to begin to practice “real democracy.” Convinced that the
two-party electoral system did not represent their interests, the discussion
circles spread rapidly, with more than 1,000 citizens’ “circles” appearing far
and wide across the country in only a few months. They named themselves
“los indignados” or “the enraged” or with the date of their initial plaza
assemblies, 15-M,52 and their occupations of public spaces eventually
became important in the origin of a political party known popularly as
“Podemos” or “We Can,” a party that did well in the European Union and
Spanish national elections of 2014 and 2015.
In considering the 15-M movement and the political party Podemos
together, some questions about democracy discussed in the Introduction
return to the foreground: Is democracy primarily (or only) a matter for
governments to carry out? Does democracy center on elections, or is it
possible (or even necessary) to explore democratic practices that do not
center on elections?
The meetings of May, 2011 emerged out of multiple factors: discontent
with the economic policies adopted by elected leaders, failures of unions to
successfully protect workers, and particularly high unemployment, which
was seen as linked to recent austerity policies. Spain has long had an
important tradition of neighborhood associations, which were important to
the May, 2011 events,53 providing an important part of a grassroots
participatory urban political culture and a type of infrastructure and network
through the Federación Regional de Asociaciones de Vecinos de Madrid
(FRAVM) and its youth wing. A tradition of assembly-based decision-
making had existed, by one account, since at least the late 1970s, when it
had been important to many social movements. This remained active in a
small network of social centers, much like those in Italy and other countries
of Europe, that had long practiced decentralized, horizontal, consensus-
based deliberations.54 As several organizations transitioned during these
years from centralized, hierarchical practices in traditional leftist
organizations to the more participatory and egalitarian practices associated
with autonomous principles, their participants were able to facilitate more
egalitarian protocols during the 15-M assemblies. The serious problems
with consensus building in the Consulta Social Europea in Madrid, an
important moment in the Global Justice Movement (GJM) discussed in the
next chapter, also led some important actors in the 15-M assemblies to
become familiar with consensus practices associated with autonomy
practices.55 While the comparative extent of transnational impacts of the
GJM, the Arab Spring events of the day, and other transnational events has
been debated, participants in the GJM were important to the events of 15-
M.56
Over a period of some three months, a small group of diverse young
participants known as “Democracia Real Ya” or “Real Democracy Already”
drafted a manifesto57 and planned the events of May 15.58 Their name was
developed to argue against the passive approach to life that characterizes
both consumer society and neoliberal politics, suggesting that their actions
were not the products of the work of politicians and bankers. As their
project gained notice, they attracted the support of more established
organizations such as Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (Platform of
Those Affected by Mortgages), Asociación Nacional de Desempleados
(ADESOR – National Association of the Unemployed), Attac España,
Intermon-Oxfam, and groups that were explicitly opposed to recent state
policies: Estado del Malestar (State of Discontent), No Les Votes (Don’t
Vote for Them), and Juventud sin Futuro (Young People with No Future).59
Tactics also were developed that led to the successful spread of the initial
plaza occupation, such as the use of Facebook early in the year by 2011
Estado del Malestar to organize a series of peaceful and imaginative flash
mobs every Friday evening in the main squares of various cities, and within
two months this phenomenon had spread to fifty cities. The statements of
these groups together identified the electoral law as a mechanism producing
the social problems, and demanded that new mechanisms for citizen
participation in decision-making be found.60
The egalitarian nature of the 15-M movement is seen in their use of the
assembly and other inclusive decision-making practices both for their own
practices and in public forums, such as public squares. The planning
practices that led up to the May 15 public gatherings were shaped by the
tradition of assembly participatory deliberations of the Spanish social
centers and other organizations.61 Small but important changes in specific
deliberative protocols had evolved in the years leading up to 2011, and
these were important when introduced into the 15-M meetings.62 They
included prioritizing people who had not spoken previously in the turn-
taking practices, and the fishbowl method.63 Another major innovation was
the bringing of participatory practices “previously confined to more or less
limited spaces such as social forums, social movement headquarters, peace
camps and social centres—out into public squares, where passers-by were
invited to join in.”64 Moreover, the ability of the 15-M participants to
manage very large deliberative assemblies was an important development
for the movement,65 allowing large participatory meetings to provide the
backbone for both the 15-M movement and the Podemos political party
activities.
The assemblies in the 15-M movement grew to such an extent that more
than 1,000 existed at different points in the period 2011–15, with many
thousands of members. As their work continued, they produced position
papers on political policies and also organized local libraries and school
lunch programs.66 Gender inequality was an ongoing topic of discussion and
contention during the 15-M meetings, as has been the case with many of the
other efforts to carry out equality in practice that we have examined.67 In
terms of gendered language, many 15-M participants of all genders adopted
the feminine plural pronoun “we” (nosotras) in an effort to disrupt the
gender inequality of the Spanish language.68
Beginning in the first half of 2014, some members of the 15-M
movement began work to form a political party, Podemos. Teachers and
researchers at Complutense University of Madrid joined with a new
generation of activists from student associations and Juventud sin Futuro
(Youth without a Future), one of the organizers of the May, 2011
movement, and members of political and social organizations and of
alternative cultural projects. As the individual merits of Pablo Iglesias and
other candidates came under scrutiny, there was a distinct shift. This shift
was the center of an important debate: What is lost when moving from a
movement without a leadership in the traditional sense into a movement
whose fate centered on the electoral fortunes of Iglesias and other
candidates? Great controversy ensued.
In electoral terms, the decision to move towards founding a political
party was initially effective. Beginning with weekly assemblies and
deploying the internet tools supplied by Reddit, Podemos tried to replicate
the 15-M participatory structure. With some initial success in the May, 2014
European Parliament elections, Podemos received over a million votes and
stunned the elected party participants by gaining five of Spain’s EU
Parliamentary seats. They then worked to develop a participatory mode of
building a national party organization initiated with a founding congress,
the November 2014 Citizens’ Assembly of more than 100,000 participants,
where they established party guidelines and some leadership bodies to
prepare for the fall, 2015 national elections.69 In the fall, 2015 Spanish
national elections, the party became Spain’s third largest party, winning
sixty-nine out of 350 seats. Then the party foundered in its expansionist
goals, achieving only seventy-one seats in the June, 2016 elections.
As a political party, Podemos has attempted to draw on the participatory
successes of 15-M and other movements and organizations. Its grassroots
assemblies are organized around particular issues, interests, or
communities, and are called “circles.” In the circles, citizen groups debate
and come up with proposals behind which the party and its leaders must
throw their weight. The contributions of the assemblies to party decisions
have been combined with other decisions taken via opinion polls, talk
shows, and electoral polling. Podemos has attempted to rewrite campaign
financing in innovative ways as a mechanism to reduce the ability of
wealthy social elites to capture party policies. By financing its activities
primarily with small loans from members, the party has attempted to rely
only on small-scale funding. The party also publishes all of its economic
activities online in real time, generating a very large, detailed accounting of
its income and expenditures, and also generating many attempts from a
wide range of the public to hold the party accountable for its budget
decisions.70 In an attempt to safeguard its participatory process, Podemos
established what is called a Commission for Democratic Guarantees, whose
members are elected. However, in a move that has been debated widely as a
possible step away from participatory decision-making, the party has begun
to use elected representatives in several ways, not only in municipal and
national elections but also in selecting circle members who will attend
central meetings held in Madrid.71 The efforts of Podemos to retain some
participatory mechanisms have been compromised by the inequality of
electoral practices, not only internally but also in choosing candidates for
the national and local elections.
The changes in the 15-M movement as some participants developed the
political party Podemos open up differences present in all the sites we have
examined for equality in practice. Each site in previous chapters takes as its
Other the political parties of the modern electoral state. By remaining
outside the electoral party system, as most participants discussed in
previous chapters have done, they are refusing to subject themselves to the
political logics and limits of modern democratic inequality. Podemos
participants disrupt sharp distinctions between electoral parties and
horizontal movements. The decision by Pablo Iglesias and others in the 15-
M movement to transition into a political party was enormously
controversial at the time, for many reasons also central to the other specific
practices that we have already reviewed. The decision drained a large
amount of work, funding, and thinking away from the 15-M movement, and
returned many of the significant accomplishments by the 15-M participants
to electoral democratic politics as usual. This weakening of social
movements through entering electoral party democracy has been noted by
many commentators in other locations and specific histories.72
The gap between 15-M and Podemos is a gap between equality and
inequality. One cannot be considered without the other. Inequality persisted
in 15-M, just as Podemos worked to practice horizontal participation. Yet,
capitalism became more central to Podemos, largely due to campaign
finance needs; individual electoral fortunes, rather than effectiveness in
collective accountability, became the key measure of success or failure; and
there is little talk in Podemos of developing alternatives to the electoral law.
These differences mark the limits and logics of modern electoral
democracy, even as they depend on the intertwined histories of the modern
state with Indigenous and anarchist groups that are the other of the state.
The split between 15-M and the political party Podemos also
demonstrates the difference at work in all claims to unity, coherence, and
consensus. Each reference made throughout this book to a community, a
movement, or a site has to suppress multiple differences in each referent for
the referent to hold its place as an object of analysis, to cohere as a distinct,
independent entity in language and in history. 15-M took the risk as a
movement in 2011 of bringing into the organization those who were still
invested in electoral politics as a source of hope and a place for the
sovereignty of the people, so that they might join with those who were more
alienated from electoral politics, who did not see party politics as the
problem and not as a solution. And they paid a price for taking that risk.
Yet, other movements and communities must all bring together people with
divergent views, just as all people themselves enact multiple differences in
bodily action, in belief, and in other subtle or even hidden ways. When
these differences emerge into the open is when we see their traces, even as
other differences must be simultaneously hidden for modern logic,
meaning, and practice to take place.

U.S. Feminist Popular Movements

Not all popular movements overthrow national governments. Many work at

a scale other than the national, or they may practice equality in a
transnational frame without focus on changing government policies,
elections, or structures. Rather than taking the nation state as the center of
popular politics, or equating democracy with electoral party systems and the
public sphere,73 “popular” may also be understood as a category open to
collective action by “the people.”74 By shifting away from an individualist
yet homogenized, universal notion of the people enforced by the modern
state, we may begin to explore Other conceptions of “the people.”
In our next site for equality in practice, “the people” takes the form of a
collective of urban women who were consistently shut out of the civil
society organizations that some see as constituting the public sphere of
debate and consensus, or even society as a whole. While feminist
movements have long been celebrated for their success in carrying out
egalitarian, participatory modes of organizing and decision-making,75 they
have also been criticized widely for obstacles to participation by women of
color. Here, I focus on a women of color feminist organization in Brooklyn,
a suburb of New York City, to get a sense of their practices. Feminists have
long been active in building egalitarian organizations, and Sista II Sista
(S2S) participates in this history even as it questions some of its practices.76
The United States has a long tradition of horizontal social movements.
While they are often left out of discussions of democracy, participatory
traditions were thriving in the twentieth-century collectives that practiced
direct participatory democracy and held equality as a central value. Using
consensus and developing nonbureaucratic, nonhierarchical administrative
structures, these movements were opposed to the democratic centralism that
characterizes many North American practices that claim democracy as their
own.77 They looked back to their ancestors in the women’s and labor
movements, former slave and socialist communalism, and other sites for
cooperative labor and shared decision-making. This tradition’s most famous
organizations are identified with the 1960s activism of the Southern
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the organization that took
democracy for its own name, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS),
which at times followed the example of SNCC.78 However, these mid-to
late-twentieth-century practices are found across many areas outside of
activist organizations: worker-run agricultural co-ops and collectives,
Indigenous communities and Quaker and Mennonite religious communities,
trucking collectives, the urban homestead movement, and across the
country from both coasts to central Pennsylvania and Iowa, the Ohio River,
Minneapolis, and other locations.79 These organizations are found in many
different social sectors, including agriculture and wholesale food
production, transportation and logistics, and political organizations
changing society to produce more equity. They range in size from small
local rural collectives to national networks deploying delegates to conduct
their business through consensus decisions.80
S2S began in 1996 when young, working-class women in Brooklyn
found that existing institutions did not speak to their desires and challenges,
and “there was no place to nurture the voices of young women of color to
participate fully and to build collective power to transform the society we
are a part of.”81 The claim by its members that S2S was needed in order to
“participate fully” demonstrates some of the shortcomings of the electoral
democratic governments locally, regionally at the state level, and nationally
that existed in the mid-1990s in this neighborhood of New York City.
Despite the presence of electoral democratic government in New York City
and lots of community organizations, they found that

in a low-income community organization, the experiences of youth

from the community were not central; in a youth-focused organization,
the experiences of young women are not central; in a women’s
organization, the experiences of poor and working-class women of
color are not central.82

Their analysis of community organizations suggests that existing, centrally

organized and vertically formed community organizations were also not
able to meet the desires of the young women of color who joined their
organization, a common problem for young people and women of color in
many different settings.
In response, S2S established a summer Freedom School for Black and
Latina teens, and that experience was so successful that they decided to
build an organization able to provide a space where everybody “could feel
valuable … and recognize everyone’s labor, as equals.”83 After extensive
discussion and research, they developed a complex structure that combines
different layers of membership, which develops leadership while also
forming a “collective structure [that] reflects the ideals of a society that
approaches all its members as equals … [so] our organization’s leadership
and decision-making model is nonhierarchical and one of inclusion.”84 The
structure combines a Sista Squad and a collective that meets monthly,
which together handle the day-to-day decisions, with an advisory board and
their general membership, all of whom are graduates of the Freedom
School. All four bodies meet twice a year to decide on the direction and
vision of the organization. Specific teams also make decisions in different
topic areas, and members choose all of their organizing issues based on
their experiences. While there is a central leadership group, the Sista Squad,
the members have found that the Sista Squad provides “a tangible
mechanism for young women to have on-going decision-making power
over the direction of the organization,”85 a space where young women can
be more than recipients or victims needing services, something that young
women often cannot access easily.
 S2S works to reduce violence against women in their neighborhoods,
both by focusing on organizational or policy changes (such as addressing
backlogs of domestic violence cases) and by providing alternatives to
established institutional mechanisms. As an organization committed to self-
determination, after the killing by the police of two teen women of color in
2000 they began to develop what they call Sista’s Liberated Ground (SLG).
SLG is a physical space where violence against women is not tolerated, and
where women turn to each other instead of the police to address the
violence in their lives. S2S has also developed Sista Circles, collectives of
support and intervention in cases of gender violence.86 The replacement of
duties and activities that traditionally were carried out by the state in this
case suggests that they are carrying out a form of autonomy that we have
seen in other chapters.87
S2S has continued to change and develop since the mid-1990s, drawing
on current models in community movements in the global South, such as
the well-known MST and Zapatista movements and also “less-known
community accountability action groups of poor women.”88 These
transformations extend beyond particular projects to include a shift in
relations to funders. The group first turned away from paid employees and
foundation funding in the late 1990s, followed by a period of time in the
early twenty-first century of having paid staff and pursuing foundation
funding, and then deciding in 2002 to shift to grassroots fundraising. As the
group began producing and marketing their own products, they also began
to sell crafts from women’s cooperatives elsewhere in the global South and
a speaker collective known as the Big Mouth Project. In engaging with
market economics, they also build networks of economic relations with
global women of color, develop member leadership, and spread knowledge
about their mission and practice.89
S2S carries out popular democracy in a sense that differs from that of
electoral democracies. Rather than focusing on “popular,” as defined by
success at winning followers or members among the large middle class
found in the United States, they devote their work to serving their own
constituencies: young women of color in the Brooklyn area. In this sense,
“popular” is being claimed on a scale and on territory Other to that of the
modern state. In age and race and class and gender terms, their work also
suggests that youth, people of color, and the poor are often silenced by
vertically organized organizations and electoral structures. This is an
identity-based critique of the modern state, one that is overlaid by other
forms of difference. Rather than reinscribing the narrow political sphere of
liberal politics, for example, they emphasize sisterhood and building strong
relations of the trust, safety, and love that are scarce commodities in modern
dog-eat-dog party politics. These affective outcomes of participatory
practice appear to be a particular strength of horizontal democratic
practice.90
S2S explicitly signal their refusal of modern regimes in their naming
practices. By referring to themselves as “sista,” they put idiomatic refusals
of state-funded school-defined spelling into action, while their S2S
acronym mixes alphabets and numerics in a playful way. By identifying
their speaker collective as the “Big Mouth Project,” they let their network
know that they are not going to practice anything resembling a polite,
middle-class politics. By naming their leaders the “Sista Squad,” they reject
the individualism of electoral leadership. And by calling their violence-free
zones “Sista’s Liberated Ground,” they reference both the liberation
movements of past decades and notions of autonomy that are widespread in
horizontalist movements. Taken together, they demonstrate most clearly the
flexible play of redefining the individual subject through collective practice.
S2S is not like a political party in the U.S. context, since it is highly
specific in its formation as an organization of both women of color and
young people. In this refusal of the universal grounds claimed by
democracy and the assumption that all are equal and all can become modern
citizens, S2S rejects the homogenizing claim to equality that founds
democracy. Taking this organization as democratic in the sense that they
govern (kratos) their own affairs asks us to reconfigure “the people”
(demos) in ways that explicitly reject the “we” of the universal. Rather than
assuming that only a universalized “we” can claim the democratic, here we
find democracy with a difference.91 The democracy of S2S responds
explicitly to the inequalities that are found in many universalist formations
of the democratic: the displacement of women and young people from
positions of power, often through the workings of social mechanisms
entrenched to advantage men and middle-aged to older adults. S2S also
attacks democracy’s claim to racial inclusion, specifically the democracy of
the European homeland of the modern and its European settler colonies
(such as the United States), where the universalized language of equality
may obscure racism’s work to ensure unequal outcomes that advantage the
outsiders, the settlers, those of European descent. By daring to see S2S’s
practices as democratic, we may displace the universalizing practices that
consistently grant colonizers, men, and middle-aged and older adults
unequal social power. By displacing the universal, we may allow political
practices formed to address unequal differences to become recognizable as
democratic.

Conclusion

Popular democracy is a key site for negotiating the claim to “the people”
that founds democracy. As a contested site, popular movements are also
where the specter that haunts democracies of all stripes may be seen at
work.92 If “the people” are actively participating across social differences in
decision-making, then little reason may exist for popular movements to
emerge. On the other hand, if difference is an important factor in the
unequal effects of democracy and the unequal distribution of its material
outcomes, then democracy conceived through difference will bring into
visibility the failures of the claim to equality.
All three sites for equal social practices in this chapter are defined by a
contrast with electoral state democracies. The turmoil in Argentina that
began in 2001 and the 2011 upheaval in Spain both took place when elected
national governments failed in the eyes of many of their citizens to practice
equality, in both cases as a result of neoliberal policies. S2S, too, was
formed not only at a moment when elected leaders had failed to produce
policies that made equality a reality, but also out of a loss of faith that civic
organizations such as youth clubs and women’s groups would be willing to
practice what they preach and carry out equality in their internal workings.
The shift from the 15-M popular movement to the political party
Podemos in Spain meant that electoral democratic practices had been
successful in neutralizing the rival claims of a popular movement that
performed an important critical role towards electoral democracy. The
intervention of political parties early on during events in Argentina was also
effective at neutralizing the efforts of local neighborhood assemblies and
other assembly-based groups to build a national network of collaboration,
preventing a rival to the national electoral system from emerging out of the
assembly-based local sites. The dual focus of S2S on both government
backlogs of domestic violence cases and their own mechanisms for
addressing violence show that they wish to address both the state and their
own independent practices. Here, we see an open struggle between electoral
democracy in the form of centralized political parties and participatory
democracy as assembly-based movements, a struggle that party politics has
been able so far to win in different ways by preserving electoral democracy
as the national norm.
Argentina, Spain, and the United States are all confronting egalitarian
democratic practices in the ways we have just seen, as are other locales and
states. These practices, as they have played out so far, show that the
decision to pursue electoral success has its costs, as does the decision to
forgo elections and carry out democracy in autonomous movements or in
other ways. Yet, the presence of the option to enter or not to enter the
electoral arena, to grant to the state a central role in democratic affairs or to
deny the state such a claim, means that each individual and every
organization at work in these specific histories has the autonomy to
determine how they will shape democracy in practice.
We have seen attempts in all three of these sites at equality across gender
differences. Configured differently depending on the historical
circumstances, Argentinian neighborhood associations and the 15-M
movement developed concrete mechanisms to correct what they saw as
unequal gender practices even in movements committed to equality, while
S2S’s main goal as an organization is to address gender inequalities that are
found even in women’s organizations. Clearly, S2S’s efforts in this area
achieve a more complex awareness of difference, critically working to
correct age, race, and other intersecting inequities. In identity terms,
considering S2S’s practices shows how the mass movements in Argentina
and Spain obscure the specific gender, racialized, class, and age differences
at work. As seen in other sites, the scale of the nation erases precisely those
differences that provide the state, capitalism, patriarchy, and other
categories with the means to distribute material goods unequally.
When we look at these three sites for equality in practice, equality is
shaped very differently in each site depending on specific historical factors
at work. The 15-M movement and its successes with equality in practice
were strongly impacted by the persistence of anarchist social centers and
other assembly-based traditions of decision-making, as well as a strong
tradition of neighborhood meetings. In Argentina, equality was shaped by a
local sense of equality across neighborhoods and by the important critique
of democracy emerging from the social centers. Failures of GJM organizing
to implement egalitarian practices in European Social Forum meetings not
long before the beginning of the 15-M movement also impacted this
movement, strengthening activists’ interest in working effectively for
equality in assemblies and other large-group settings, which paid off for the
15-M movement.
Neighborhoods also became a key site for the practice of equality in
Argentina in 2001, as they did in Spain ten years later. Yet, for S2S,
neighborhoods as a focus for organizing were motivated by the lack of
equality in neighborhood elections and community organizations, not by
their equality. The divergence in thinking about neighborhoods seen here
may serve as a signal that social differences in gender, age, class, and race
are critical to the analysis and practice of equality in local settings such as
neighborhoods. The importance of difference seen in this chapter, an issue
frequently noted in social scientific studies of equality,93 is one reason why
the book has been structured around thinking democracy through
difference.
Yet, what of communities not recognizable in modern terms? As mostly
urban, modern subjects, many participants in these mass movements have
largely subjected themselves to modern liberal terms. The willingness of the
post-2001 movements to cut off roads and bridges following the rural
piqueteros introduced new tactics into the urban political landscape of
Buenos Aires. The Sista Squad, as a collective of those who are so
mysteriously, yet somehow consistently, displaced by modern logics and
categories, demands that the homogenized universalism of modern equality
be revisited. Through playful naming practices, they draw on the honorable
tactic of vernacular language to carry out the serious work of liberating
territory from the violence acceptable to modern liberalism. Recognizing
their work as democratic practice opens up the question of differences of an
Other sort.
Equality in popular movements, then, is produced against the grain of
surrounding inequalities only by drawing on careful, selective analysis of
difference as it works with and against those specific mechanisms that
produce equality in social relations. As occurred in Spain in 2011 and
Brooklyn or Argentina from the late 1990s up into the present, those who
want to see equality carried out in their own lives must work hard at
identifying those practices that make equality in social relations possible,
and then collaborate with others to make it a reality. Then, democracy with
a difference becomes something more than a new type of imagination. It
becomes equality in practice.

Notes
1 Lungo Uclés distinguishes the Spanish-language meaning of “popular” movements from the
terms of wealth or socioeconomic class standing to argue that the term refers to those who
“promote social justice and the common good” and are characterized by work towards “social
transformation in economic, political, cultural, and social terms that benefit the marginalized:”
Mario Lungo Uclés, “Building an Alternative: The Formation of a Popular Project,” in The New
Politics of Survival, ed. Minor Sinclair (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1995), 153–4, 173.
2 Lungo Uclés, “Alternative,” 153–4, 163–6.
3 Jacques Rancière, Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy, trans. Julie Rose (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota, 1999), 27–32.
4 Benjamin Arditi, Politics on the Edges of Liberalism: Difference, Populism, Revolution,
Agitation (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), 81.
5 John Judis, The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and
European Politics (New York: Columbia Global Reports, 2016); Michael Kazin, The Populist
Persuasion: an American History (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998).
6 Spivak suggests the use of the term “subaltern” for this broad notion of democracy that might
recognize the material needs and demands of all, rather than seeing these citizens as “the
people,” because of the danger of turning the term “people” into a slogan: Spivak, “Scattered
Speculations,” 478.
7 Lungo Uclés, “Alternative,” 153–4, 163–6.
8 Elizabeth Povinelli’s argument against Laclau’s view of “the people” in his study of populist
reason suggests that structuralist linguistic and even identitarian tendencies may still be found in
the most rigorous poststructuralist analyses of popular movement: Elizabeth Povinelli, “Beyond
the Names of the People: Disinterring the Body Politic,” Cultural Studies 26, no. 2–3 (2012):
378–9, doi: 10.1080/09502386.2011.636206, accessed May 1, 2016.
9 Povinelli, “People,” 371, 385–8.
10 Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt
Lute Book Company, 1987), 3.
11 This range of participants was suggested by Gloria Anzaldúa’s discussion of los atravesados in
Borderlands/La Frontera, 2.
12 This practice may be found in political theory, as in Laclau’s refusal, following Arendt and
Warner, to reject demographic categories: Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason (New York:
Verso, 2005), 110, 146, quoted in Henry Krips, “New Social Movements, Populism and the
Politics of the Lifeworld,” Cultural Studies 26, no. 2–3 (March–May 2012),
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2011.636197, 253; see also Spivak, Death 25, 30, 70, 102.
13 For a nuanced discussion of when and how the notion of the “we” must be closed in democratic
politics, see Alan Keenan, Democracy in Question: Democratic Openness in a Time of Political
Closure (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 9–20.
14 Most of these elected governments were effectively one-party governments, though they are
generally contrasted with other one-party governments during extended periods in Japan and
Mexico that have been heralded as successful democratic states: Rosalind C. Morris, “Populist
 Politics in Asian Networks: Positions for Rethinking the Question of Political Subjectivity,”
Positions 20, no. 1 (2012): 37–65, doi: 10.1215/10679847–1471374.
15 Laclau, Populist Reason; Jacques Rancière, Hatred of Democracy, trans. Steve Corcoran (New
York: Verso, 2006), 73–4, 80; Paul Bowman, “This Disagreement Is Not One: The Populisms of
Laclau, Rancière and Arditi,” Social Semiotics 17, no. 4 (2007), doi:
10.1080/10350330701637114.
16 Povinelli, “The People,” 380–1.
17 Spivak, “Popular,” 436.
18 In this chapter, I use the phrase “popular democracy,” rather than what was characterized during
debates on the left in the 1990s as “radical democracy.”
19 Margaret Canovan, The People (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Laclau,
Populist Reason, 3–20, 67–128; Rancière, Disagreement, 99–100.
20 Raúl Zibechi, Dispersing Power: Social Movements as Anti-State Forces, trans. Ramor Ryan
(Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2010), 122.
21 Zibechi, Dispersing Power, 138–40.
22 Donna Lee Van Cott, “Explaining Ethnic Autonomy Regimes in Latin America,” Studies in
Comparative International Development 35, no. 4 (2001): 30–58.
23 Zapatista Army of National Liberation, “Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandona,”
http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/sdsl-en/, accessed November 15, 2012.
24 Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés, “Resistance and Rebellion III,”
http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2015/06/12/resistance-and-rebellion-iii-subcomandante-
insurgentemoises/, accessed June 15, 2016.
25 Paul Chatterton, Autonomy in the City? Reflections on the UK Social Centres Movement (Leeds,
np: 2006); Giorgi Katsiaficas, The Subversion of Politics: European Autonomous Social
Movements and Everyday Life (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2006); Cristina Flesher Fominaya,
“Debunking Spontaneity: Spain’s 15-M/Indignados as Autonomous Movement,” Social
Movement Studies 14, no. 22 (2015): 142–63, doi: 10.1080/14742837.2014.945075.
26 Héctor Díaz-Polanco, Indigenous Peoples in Latin America: The Quest for Self-Determination
(Oxford: Westview Press, 1997); Santiago Colás, “What’s Wrong with Representation?
Testimonio and Democratic Culture,” in The Real Thing: Testimonial Discourse and Latin
America, ed. Georg Gugelberger (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996), 161–71; Aracely
Cal y Mayor Burguete, Indigenous Autonomy in Mexico (Copenhagen: IWGIA, 2000); Van
Cott, “Ethnic Autonomy.”
27 Zibechi, Dispersing Power, 138–40.
28 Flesher Fominaya, “Debunking Spontaneity,” 145.
29 Raúl Zibechi, Territories in Resistance: A Cartography of Latin American Social Movements,
trans. Ramor Ryan (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2012), 14–18.
30 Marina Sitrin, Everyday Revolutions: Horizontalism and Autonomy in Argentina (New York:
Zed Books, 2012), 1.
31 Gerardo Young, Lucas Guagini, and Alberto Amato, “Argentina’s New Social Protagonists,”
Clarín, September 26, 2002, reprint World Press Review, 49, no. 12 (December 2002),
www.worldpress.org/Americas/789.cfm, accessed October 27, 2016.
32 Sitrin, Everyday, 19–25.
33 Ibid., 29–30, 43.
34 Ibid., 35.
35 Ibid., 49–51, 65–8.
36 Ibid., 52–60, 67–70.
37 Ibid., 55–6, 71–3.
38 Gustavo Esteva and M.S. Prakash, Grassroots Postmodernism: Remaking the Soil of Cultures
(New York: Zed Books, 1998), n5; Sam Dolgoff, The Anarchist Collectives: Workers’ Self-
 Management in the Spanish Revolution, 1936–39 (New York: Free Life Editions, 1974).
39 Sitrin, Everyday, 68, 69–70.
40 Ibid., 71–3, 80–1.
41 Ibid., 74, 80–1.
42 The considerable writing about worker-owned and managed enterprises is an important resource
for understanding many debates about direct participatory democratic processes. Frequent
debates occur over whether elected representatives are also needed: whether support workers
(e.g., cleaning staff, administrative assistants) should also participate; the balance between
efficiency and participation; and other issues. See Immanuel Ness and Dario Azzellini, Ours to
Master and to Own: Workers’ Control from the Commune to the Present (Houston: Haymarket
Books, 2011); Richard Wolf, Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism (Chicago: Haymarket
Books, 2012); Zibechi, Territories, 107–8.
43 Sitrin, Everyday, 52, 67–8.
44 Ibid., 54, 134–6, 154–6, 190–1.
45 Ibid., 69.
46 Ibid., 70, 77–9.
47 Ibid., 69, 73–82.
48 Ibid., 12.
49 Ibid., 85–100. Analysis of the importance of love, trust, and other relational outcomes from
equality in practice may be found in Heather Davis and Paige Sarlin, “ ‘On the Risk of a New
Relationality:’ An Interview with Lauren Berlant and Michael Hardt,” Reviews in Cultural
Theory 2, no. 3 (2012): 7–27.
50 Sitrin, Everyday, 96–7.
51 Ibid., 86, 100.
52 Flesher Fominaya suggests that the term “los indignados” was applied to the movement by
international media, and that 15-M is the name used by participants, so I use 15-M below.
Participants reportedly did not feel that “indignation” or “outrage” captured the intensity of their
feelings about Spanish electoral politics; nor did it capture the range of other feelings and
actions, such as hope and solidarity, that brought them to the movement: Flesher Fominaya,
“Spontaneity,” 160n1; Soledad Alcaide, “Movimiento 15-M: Los ciudadanos exigen reconstruir
la politíca,” El País, May 17, 2011,
http://politica.elpais.com/politica/2011/05/16/actualidad/1305578500_751064.html, accessed
May 27, 2016.
53 Flesher Fominaya, “Spontaneity,” 149, 153.
54 Ibid., 149, 151.
55 Cristina Flesher Fominaya, “Movement Culture as Habit(us): Resistance to Change in the
Routinized Practices of Resistance,” in Conceptualizing Culture in Social Movement Research,
ed. Britta Baumgarten, Priska Daphi, and Peter Ullrich (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014);
Flesher Fominaya, “Spontaneity,” 150.
56 Flesher Fominaya, “Spontaneity,” 151, 157.
57 Democracia real YA! “Manifesto (English)”, www.democraciarealya.es/manifiesto-
comun/manifesto-english/, accessed April 14, 2016.
58 Democracia real YA! “Quiénes somos,” www.democraciarealya.es/quienes-somos/, accessed
May 27, 2016.
59 Eduardo Romanos, “Collective Learning Processes within Social Movements: Some Insights
into the Spanish 15-M/Indignados Movement,” in Understanding European Movements: New
Social Movements, Global Justice Struggles, Anti-Austerity Protest, ed. Cristina Flesher
Fominaya and Laurence Cox (London: Routledge, 2013), 205.
60 Romanos, “Collective,” 206; Cristina Flesher Fominaya, “Creating Cohesion from Diversity,”
Sociological Inquiry 80, no. 3 (2010), doi: 10.1111/j.1475–682X.2010.00339; Eduardo
 Romanos, “El 15 M y la Democracia de los Movimientos Sociales,” La Vie des Idées.fr,
November 18, 2011, www.booksandideas.net/El-15M-y-la-democracia-delos.html, accessed
May 29, 2016.
61 Flesher Fominaya, “Spontaneity,” 149–50; Eva Botella Ordinas, “La democracia directa de la
Puerta del Sol,” La Vie des Idées.fr, last modified May 24, 2011, www.booksandideas.net/La-
democracia-directa-de-la-Puerta.html, accessed May 29, 2016.
62 Acampada Sol, “Guía rápida para la dinamización de asambleas populares,” #Acampadasol, last
modified May 31, 2011, http://madrid.tomalaplaza.net/2011/05/31/guia-rapida-para-la-
dinamizacion-de-asambleas-populares/. Accessed May 29, 2016.
63 Flesher Fominaya, “Spontaneity,” 151, 155.
64 Romanos, “Collective,” 210.
65 Flesher Fominaya, “Spontaneity,”147.
66 Bécquer Seguín and Sebastiaan Faber, “Can Podemos Win in Spain?” The Nation, January 14,
2015, www.thenation.com/article/can-podemos-win-spain/, 14b, accessed February 2, 2015.
67 Sandra Ezquerra, “Feminist Practice,” trans. Ollie Brock, www.opendemocracy.net/sandra-
ezquerra/feminist-practice-in-15-m, accessed May 30, 2016.
68 Flesher Fominaya, “Spontaneity,” 156.
69 Pablo Iglesias, “Understanding Podemos,” New Left Review 93 (May/June, 2015), 18–19,
https://newleftreview.org/II/93/pablo-iglesias-spain-on-edge.
70 Frances Moore Lappe, “ ‘Occupy’ Spanish-Style…. Big Lessons for Us?” Huffington Post,
September 23, 2015, www.huffingtonpost.com/frances-moore-lappe/occupy-spanishstylebig-
le_b_8177722.html, accessed May 30, 2016.
71 The Spain Report, “This Is What Happens in a Podemos Citizens’ Circle,” June 12, 2014,
www.thespainreport.com/articles/381–140612100000-this-is-what-happens-in-a-podemos-
citizens-circle, accessed May 30, 2016.
72 Zibechi, Territories, 267–98; Zibechi, Dispersing Power, 4; Julie Hemment, “Querying
Democratization: Civil Society, International Aid, and the Riddle of the Third Sector,” in
Empowering Women in Russia: Activism, Aid, and NGOs (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 2007), 45–68; Sonia Alvarez, “Translating the Global: Effects of Transnational
Organizing on Local Feminist Discourses and Practices in Latin America,” Meridians:
Feminism, Race, Transnationalism 1 (no. 1) (2000): 29–67.
73 Henry Krips argues against the assumption that politics is possible only within the limits of the
public sphere (an assumption found in Habermas and Cohen and Arato’s analysis of second-
wave feminism), rejects collective action in other social sites, and demonstrates the reductio ad
absurdum of the Habermasian position: Krips, “Populism,” 250.
74 Lungo Uclés, “Alternative,” 153–4, 173.
75 Polletta, Freedom, 149–57, 164–73; Temma Kaplan, Crazy for Democracy: Women in
Grassroots Movements (New York: Routledge, 1996); Temma Kaplan, Taking Back the Streets:
Women, Youth, and Direct Democracy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).
76 For women of color feminist collectives in the United States that practice horizontal democratic
decision-making, see Jessica Taft, Rebel Girls: Youth Activism and Social Change across the
Americas (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 135–41; and Polletta, Freedom, 47–8,
80–95. For a feminist collective in Latin America that deploys horizontal organizing practices,
see among many others Grupo Venancia, “Grupo Venancia: Comunicación y Educación Popular
Feminista,” http://grupovenancia.org, accessed March 4, 2015.
77 John Curl, For All the People: Uncovering the Hidden History of Cooperation, Cooperative
Movements, and Communalism in America, 2nd edition (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2012), 206–
20; Polletta, Freedom, 3–4, 69–79, 133–7, 150–6, 218–21; Winnie Breise, Community and
Organization in the New Left, 1962–68: The Great Refusal (Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University
Press).
 78 Polletta, Freedom, 47–8, 80–3, 124–31, 138–47.
79 Curl, For All, 206–7, 214.
80 Ibid., 207.
81 Sista II Sista, “Sistas Makin’ Moves: Collective Leadership for Personal Transformation and
Social Justice,” in Color of Violence: The Incite! Anthology, ed. Incite! Women of Color against
Violence (Boston: South End Press, 2006), 197.
82 Ibid., 197.
83 Ibid., 198.
84 Ibid., 199.
85 Ibid., 200.
86 Ibid., 203–4.
87 Neil Harvey, “Beyond Hegemony: Zapatismo, Empire, and Dissent,” NACLA Report on the
Americas, September–October 2005, 12–17, doi: 10.1080/10714839.2005.11722353; Werner
Bonefeld and Kosmas Psychopedis, Human Dignity: Social Autonomy and the Critique of
Capitalism (London: Ashgate, 2005).
88 Sista II Sista, “Sistas Makin’ Moves,” 204.
89 Ibid., 205–7.
90 Polletta, Freedom, 3, 16–21, 151–4, 161–75.
91 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Righting Wrongs – 2002: Accessing Democracy among the
Aboriginals,” in Other Asias (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008), 35–6.
92 Arditi, Liberalism, 46.
93 Donatella Della Porta, “Deliberation in Movement: Why and How to Study Deliberative
Democracy and Social Movements,” Acta Politica 40 (2005): 339, doi: 10.1057/ palgrave.ap.
5500116.

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5 Global Democracies
Global Equality in Practice

Equality in practice is possible at very large scales, including the global.

Assembly and consensus practices serve as the primary decision-making
process for several organizations, networks, and other bodies that govern
their own affairs globally. This chapter introduces three of these
organizations or networks, among a number of other comparable
organizations and movements, exploring the ways in which they are
committed to equalizing participation globally in governing their own
affairs. These communities test the spatial limits of direct, face-to-face
participation by operating over great distances, and have developed
practical solutions to make equality in practice possible at that scale.
For these groups, democracy is defined primarily in terms of their own
collective participatory decision-making as organizations and as networks.
Many that do work globally have witnessed and experienced the negative,
often violent effects of the inequalities of the modern state, and have been
very determined to develop concrete practices that do not fall into unequal
practices in their own political work. By carrying out both direct
participation (rather than electoral politics) and open-ended subjectivities
(rather than the identity politics of the new left), members of their
organizations reclaim state political and economic functions to gradually
render it redundant.1 They also recognize that the cause of much of the
damage to their communities is not only local and national but also global.
So, they work to address the global causes of the unequally distributed
devastation by colonization, neocolonialism, globalization, and related
practices and beliefs.
Since the destructive effects of globalization on many communities and
social groups are well known, there is no need to review them here. Many
who continue to see the modern liberal state as a leverage point for equality
have argued that globalization has weakened the ability of nation states to
serve their citizens equally through the workings of intergovernmental
organizations, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF ) or the World
Trade Organization (WTO).2 Trade agreements that further consolidate the
advantages of large transnational corporations (TNCs) in international
economic competition have been a key factor in globalization, and have
consolidated the grip of TNCs on international markets. These
developments have been met with much opposition, including by some of
the organizations discussed in this chapter.
The weakness of the modern state in advocating for the interests of all,
not just a few wealthy citizens, has led to a great deal of writing about how
democracy might be effective at a global scale. As states have ceded much
power over their own policies to TNCs and intergovernmental
organizations, such as the IMF and the WTO, interest has increased in
finding ways in which these bodies might again become accountable to
popular democratic sovereignty.3 Some have argued for transnational
governance bodies, such as the European Union or a democratized WTO
and the United Nations.4 Others have argued for the deployment of
international law to enforce standards that produce more equality in global
social relations.5 Still others have argued that globalization requires
fundamental changes in the ways sovereignty is exercised as states respond
to increasing transnational interference in domestic affairs, including a
move away from the long-standing bedrock of democracies: popular
sovereignty.6 None of these different proposals and practices has been
widely accepted, particularly as the European Parliament has demonstrated
weak democratic accountability to national citizens, and international law
has come under criticism for its unequal exchanges and ethnocentric
character.7 Through these debates, the politicized character of claims to the
universal comes again into view, open for discussion even as interested
parties wrangle with each other to promote their own narrowly defined
goals.
Another approach to the failure of existing mechanisms to bring TNCs to
accountability emphasizes the public sphere. In this conception of
democratic accountability, global information flows and other
communication bring debates about ongoing events and state actions to the
attention of what are sometimes called “transnational counterpublics”8 or a
“translocal public.”9 In this analysis, the public sphere may intervene in
state and transnational corporate attempts to legitimate transnational bodies
such as the WTO and the dehumanizing use of torture and illegal detentions
in the War on Terror.10 Yet, this approach displaces direct participation with
distant communication, and incorrectly assumes that all are equal in their
ability to communicate globally, overlooking significant differences in
power. Many of those who hold this approach also rely on electoral
mechanisms to redress inequality in the face of substantial evidence to the
contrary.
A more openly colonizing version of globalization as a mode of
democratization has been the expansion of U.S. and British electoral
practices in Eastern Europe during the post-Soviet era and in the Middle
East during the War on Terror. In these locations, national interests are at
work in attempts to install forms of democracy friendly to large
corporations based in these two countries under the guise of
“democratization.” Claims of the universal value of democracy provide a
rationale for policy interventions, loan programs, and even military
invasions that consistently seem to benefit business interests in Western
Europe and North America more than the citizens of the countries being
“democratized.” Democracy depends, in this vision, not on active citizen
participation in shaping their own affairs, but in the passive citizen favored
by Schumpeter and supporters of neoliberal democratic forms.11
These practices assume that democracy is a single, universal entity.12
Examining equality in practice through the preceding chapters, we find that
democracy is multiple, not unified and centered in Europe and its settler
heirs. When questions about difference come to the center of democratic
practice, universal claims fail to unify all forms of equality in practice into a
single essence. Communities and organizations operating globally must
work across multiple forms of difference. There are identitarian and
material differences at work, such as national borders, languages, the costs
of travel, and regional differences, as well as divergent histories and
multiple competing and erased frames and modes of practice. There are also
the other Others that haunt each entity or organization, each community and
individual displaced through implicit contrasts. The previous chapters show
that different sites for equality in practice take different assumptions and
frames for realizing participatory democracy and its equalizing effects.
Among the many forms of equality in practice, there are some that have a
global reach.

The Global Justice Movement

The movement most directly and explicitly addressing the inequalities of

globalization or global economic financialization is the Global Justice
Movement (GJM). While some identify this movement with the anti-WTO
protests from around 2000 in the global North, opposition to various policy
changes by the IMF and the United States began in the global South in the
mid-1970s.13 As the United States reduced currency exchange and banking
regulations and capital controls under Presidents Nixon and Ford, the
attacks on regulation spread to other industries, such as air travel, mining,
and education. Related attacks on regulation began in other countries, most
notably in policy advice in 1973 for the new military dictatorship in Chile.14
As globalization policy changes spread internationally and into United
States-dominated organizations such as the IMF and the World Bank,
budgets supporting the poor were cut, and resistance movements began in
Egypt, Peru, Tunisia, and many other countries during the mid-1970s. With
the emergence of the policies in the global North known as the Washington
Consensus around 1980, globalization policies favoring TNCs were more
consistently applied across many countries. Worsening inequality had
arrived with a vengeance.
National resistance in the global South to corporate globalization was
networked informally with other resistance movements, since resistance
movements generally have relied on history and diverse types of experience
to improve strategy, obtain resources, and provide shelter when met with
state violence. Since resistance emerged in the global North and
communication through the internet was made easier in the 1990s,
resistance to globalization has become a global force in its own right.
Linking the global South and North in multiple ways, the movement has
had major successes, such as halting the next round of the WTO
agreements, the so-called Doha round, which broke down in 2008. The
movement has blocked other international trade agreements, including the
Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), since these agreements have
proven very damaging to national economies in the global South and to
labor movements, weakening national sovereignty and harming the
environment. The current push to force the populations of nations in the
global South to go along with trade agreements in both the Pacific and the
Atlantic shows that advocates for financialization and globalization
continue to pursue greater inequality, both within countries of the global
North and South and across regional differences.
The GJM is made up of many overlapping and interlinked networks of
organizations, and this form itself provides a very important example of the
decentralized practices that are Other to the practice of centralized modern
electoral states.15 There are some established networks, such as People’s
Global Action, and many overlapping informal networks of collaboration
and mobilization.16 Their practices may be called democratic in an irregular,
inconsistent manner, since the networks are made up of some organizations
that are centralized and hierarchical in their practice as well as
organizations that put to work the assembly structures, consensus decision
mechanisms, and other operations that reduce inequality.17
In the many organizations and even networks of organizations in the
global justice movements that share the practices of participatory decision-
making and a commitment to horizontality, many common practices are
found. One analysis has found that efforts to practice horizontality and open
participation range across multiple sites in each organization, from the way
meetings or informal discussions are conducted, to decision-making and the
sharing of information about meetings and decisions, to the ways specific
actions are conducted.18 In addition, countermeasures often adopted to the
frequent pattern of particular individuals becoming more active in
communicating and even in decision-making processes include rotating
tasks; distributing information frequently to all participants; ensuring equal
access to needed resources; and allowing speakers who have not spoken
previously to speak ahead of others.19 Yet, the movement includes
organizations and networks that are more centralized and those that are less
centralized, more hierarchical and less hierarchical, more committed to
broad participation and less committed.20
Difference is key in such a complex array of organizations. The
infrastructures for the GJM in different regions and even countries have
different histories, with the social center and anarchist traditions more
important in Europe,21 while organizing against dictatorships and one-party
democracies has been more central to movements in Latin America and
parts of Asia.22 Taking these divergent histories as producing difference
makes it possible to reject the assumption that all movements opposing
corporate globalization are the same, a common mistake in several forms of
theorizing global justice emerging from Europe.23
Yet, limits to difference are invariably enforced, and those limits may
damage equality in practice if they are not constantly revisited and
reappraised. In the GJM, the specific ways in which different participants of
the movement came to the collective work together led to tension, and even
to some moments of restructuring. For example, there were disagreements
about meeting facilitation and domination by organizations from the global
North, led by Indigenous organizations and some larger organizations from
the global South, including MST (discussed in Chapter 3). These occurred
at meetings of the People’s Global Action in Bangalore in 1999 and again in
Cochabamba, Bolivia, in 2001. As a result, these disagreements were one
factor in the decision of the People’s Global Action (PGA), one of the
networks producing the resistance to corporate globalization, to begin
working after 2001 in regionally based networks while still coordinating
globally.24 In deciding to accept different meeting styles and other
differences, the PGA operated in a manner that did not allow a uniform,
homogenized notion of its organization to overrun the divergent practices of
which it was made up at the time. However, it also demonstrated a clear
limit to the willingness of activists from the global North and from
European settler colonies in Argentina and other parts of Latin America to
continue to engage with Indigenous and subaltern practices.
Other forms of inequality also persist in GJM networks. Observers have
noted that European meeting discussions may be dominated by a small
group who speak more frequently and have the advantage of being able to
devote time to preparing arguments and evidence, with a tendency towards
reduced involvement for newcomers.25 The turn towards consensus in
decision-making has been one response to continuing inequalities,
combined with an emphasis on active sharing of information among all
participants.26 This approach is often met with criticism from those who
would prefer to save time and effort by returning to representative systems
and majority-based voting decisions, weighting the capitalist values of
efficiency and time management over equality.27 Multiple approaches have
emerged in GJM organizations, some deploying representative delegates
based on elections or consensus, and others continuing to make decisions in
assemblies with or without consensus practices.28 This work obscures
comparable practices in Indigenous and subaltern community participants
in the GJM movements, limiting difference as it impacts GJM equality in
practice.

La Via Campesina

A number of organizations have begun to operate globally to address

inequalities, but many do not operate democratically. Among those outside
the international nongovernmental organization (INGO) and state
organization sectors, Slum Dwellers International and the Self-Employed
Workers’ Association are some of the better-known organizations. La Via
Campesina is a network of over 100 largely rural farmer organizations from
all over the world that work together to shape global food, farming, and
land policies. By opposing the corporate-friendly globalization policies
promoted by the WTO and other intergovernmental organizations, such as
the Food and Agriculture Organization (a part of the United Nations) and
the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), La
Via Campesina also participates in global work towards equality as
measured not in wealth but in access to food and land.
The rise of private property regimes in the eighteenth century and the
enclosure of the commons have meant decreased access to land for poor
farmers. The growth of cities and the pursuit of industrialization have meant
the decline of access to land for farmers, policies that coerce farmers to
leave their land and migrate to cities to join the industrial workforce, and
the displacement of small-holder farmers by large landholders, including
both other farmers and agribusiness corporations. These attacks on small
farmers accelerated globally in the postwar era, and increased as neoliberal
policies were put in place by outside forces in the global South with the
complicity of national leadership. As discussions to end the General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) agreements and institute a more
aggressive neoliberal global regime under the WTO gained momentum in
the mid-1980s, family farmers knew that they had to act.29 As they began to
move towards collective organizing, they all drew on the local organizing
and resistance traditions of their region.
 Farmers were represented in policy circles and the Uruguay round WTO
negotiations only by organizations funded and staffed by large agricultural
producers, such as the International Federation of Agricultural Producers
(IFAP). So, the late 1980s saw farmers’ organizations from different regions
beginning to talk with each other about shared concerns and how to
collaborate.30 In 1992, farmer organizations from Central America and the
Caribbean, Europe, and North America met in Nicaragua to discuss how to
build links between their groups that might strengthen alternatives to
neoliberal agricultural policies. La Via Campesina was founded in 1993 at a
meeting in Mons, Belgium, where a formal declaration was drafted, known
as the Mons Declaration, that explicitly opposed the exclusion of farmers
from the process that would lead to the founding of the WTO in the
following year.31 Operating as an autonomous farmers’ organization
drawing from local, grassroots groups of small farmers and independent of
particular governments or INGO organizations, La Via Campesina begin its
work of participating in global discussions of food and agriculture in 1995
and increasing the number of member organizations. Arguing for the rights
of small farmers to be at the table when decisions are being made about
global food policy, it asked that the United Nations and other
intergovernmental bodies be democratized so that the right to democratic
decision-making and “equal participation in economic, political, and social
life” could be respected, particularly for rural women.32 This statement
shows equality in practice countering the inequalities of modern states and
their derivative INGO practices.
Early in its existence, La Via Campesina was involved in struggles with
INGO organizations that attempted to shape its organization through
consulting with a small number of those seen in leadership positions, rather
than with the membership as a whole. This experience strengthened the
commitment of the organization to build inclusive participatory
mechanisms for decision-making, information-sharing, and coordination.33
La Via Campesina participants have increasingly emphasized consensus-
based decision-making, beginning early in the organization’s history and
increasing with public announcements in 2007 to address the issues we
have consistently seen of differences of gender, race, class, ethnicity, and
other inequalities in practice.34 Since consensus in its various forms allows
individuals or, in some forms, small groups to prevent agreements unless
they are satisfied with revisions or other negotiated arrangements,35
consensus may reduce problems arising from gender and class inequalities,
racisms and ethnic differences, a tyranny of the majority, and other ways in
which inequality is enforced. Yet, consensus participants may still be
subject to intense peer pressure, even to the extent of threatened violence or
expulsion from the community, and other forces at work in social relations
that are not equal. In addition to participatory mechanisms, La Via
Campesina also uses a representative structure, including a regional
coordinating committee and the International Coordinating Committee,
developing a hybrid form of organizing comparable to the MST practices
seen in Chapter 3.
After its explicit mention of gender differences in its founding
declaration, gender equity has proven to be an area where La Via
Campesina continues to grow. The failure to establish mechanisms for
gender equity early in the organization’s history led to stagnation at around
20 percent of participation by women in organizing and doing the work.
Those women who were experienced in the fight for full participation in
their local organizations demanded change at the second international
conference in 1996, and a women’s commission formed at that time was
successful in increasing women’s participation at subsequent meetings,
beginning an International Women’s Assembly and establishing a
requirement for gender equality in the International Coordinating
Commission (ICC). The International Women’s Assembly was able to work
with the organization as a whole at the Third International Conference in
2000 to approve a Gender Position Paper. The document outlines a broad
agenda for strengthening women’s participation in decision-making across
the large organization, and the organization has seen a rise to parity in many
national and regional committees and the international conference
meetings.36 This mechanism of gender equity at the ICC level is comparable
to the approach to gender equity adopted by MST, which is also a member
organization in La Via Campesina. Multiple obstacles continue to prevent
more gender equity in the organization, however.37
La Via Campesina has struggled in some ways with one issue that also
plagues the GJM, just discussed, and the World Social Forum (WSF ):
inconsistent participation from the poorest of the poor, the subaltern, and
other groups in profoundly difficult economic circumstances. From its
founding, the organization has not included farmers who own large areas of
land, since such large-scale farmers had earlier aligned themselves with
IFAP and agribusiness interests based in the global North.38 Yet, the La Via
Campesina network is comprised of multiple member organizations, and
some of these organizations have relatively few members who are landless
or near landless, such as those with farms of less than one hectare.39 Yet, as
an organization committed to advocating for small farmers, La Via
Campesina as a network does advocate for small farmers with landholdings
of different sizes. In this sense, they are fighting to democratize not only
their own social relations but also the land itself, by making land available
to all who wish to farm.40 Recent victories in Brazil, a nation where both La
Via Campesina and MST have been successful, are seen in reforms in
school lunch programs stipulating that some 30 percent of food must come
from family farms, and in the 2014 adoption by the Brazilian Ministry of
Health of dietary guidelines that mandate attention to ecological, social, and
cultural aspects of food production.41

The World Social Forum

The WSF will serve as our final specific site for egalitarian democratic
practices. Explicitly formed to develop a new mode of politics, the WSF
broke with the centralized, vertically organized politics associated with
labor unions, labor-based political parties, and other organizations
associated with the left. Adopting a mode of organizing known as the open
space method, the WSF has come to emphasize the perspectives of the
global South, identitarian differences, and horizontal relations. The WSF
specifically targets the well-known declaration “There Is No Alternative,”
or TINA, by Margaret Thatcher, the British prime minister and one of the
leading architects of neoliberal corporate globalization. And so, known by
the slogan “Other worlds are possible,” the WSF attempts to avoid limiting
knowledge and practice within the terms of liberal political theory and
modern democratic practice that have allowed globalization to emerge:
capitalism, civil society and the public sphere, pluralism, free choice, and
electoral representation.42
For the WSF and similar transnational networking processes, the
objective is

not to produce consensus or a general will to be channeled to

representative institutions, but to facilitate linkages among self-
 organizing subjects who will go on to act autonomously as part of
other networks … in a myriad range of ways, in, out, and beyond
institutionalized democracy.43

The WSF met initially in early 2001 in Porto Alegre, Brazil as an explicit
alternative to the meeting of national and corporate economic leaders in the
World Economic Forum held annually in Davos, Switzerland. Over the
years, the WSF expanded its meeting sites to Asia, Africa, and other
locales, and has continued to meet every year or two globally and also in
smaller, regional settings. There are many streams of historical movements
that converge in the WSF, with the many stories of its origins emphasizing
different histories.44
Equality in practice in the WSF may be found in several sites. We have
already mentioned the open space approach to organizing, the most
explicitly horizontal and theoretically well-developed commitment of the
WSF to equality and openness to participation by all. This is a forum for the
horizontal exchange of strategies and experiences that provide alternatives
and strengthen global justice, a space to encounter difference and develop
skills and practices in an ethic of nonobjectifying, respectful, collective
work. This approach aimed to anchor the discussions and outcomes in the
global South and in decentralized, self-organized planning and production
of the thousands of events for each Forum. The WSF has been very active
in adopting internet tools to facilitate organizing particular workshops,
panels, round tables, and other discussion formats that make up much of the
annual meeting content. The WSF youth camp, discussed in the next
chapter, provides one of the most consistent attempts made by the WSF to
practice consensus-based egalitarian democracy. Open space organizing is
also linked to working with difference in ways that make unified positions
and representative practices impossible, autonomous from any particular
movement, government, political party, or organization.45
The many compromises made in the WSF regarding the vision of equal,
open space warn us about any assumptions we might make that equality is
easy to achieve, or even possible. Centralized, hierarchically structured
organizations that are central to what many would call civil society are also
central to the WSF, in particular a number of big, European-based INGOs
that bring large contingents to most meetings and participate actively in
organizing events, panels, and other components of the meeting.46 Leftists,
particularly from France, Italy, and several Latin American nations, have
been overrepresented on the International Council, where much of the
meeting planning takes place, and leftists have also had an outsized impact
on how the WSF is studied and represented in the press.47 The importance
of funding for the event also pressures the WSF into adapting to market
advertising and other capitalist practices, and national security concerns in
host nations have pressured the WSF into compromises with state security
practices. In other ways, the long-term planning and day-to-day process of
self-organizing and producing the events of the forum are “shot through
with political determinations, contested social relations and power
inequalities.”48
The presence of significant numbers of Indigenous participants,
particularly at the 2004 meeting in Mumbai, the 2007 Nairobi meeting, and
the 2016 Montreal meeting, and the decision to hold the 2009 meeting in
Belém, Brazil for easy access by South American Indigenous communities,
might suggest that the WSF has adapted its organizing methods to respond
to Indigenous knowledge paradigms and the limits to travel needed for
attending meetings. Yet, critics charge that specific themes and issues raised
by Indigenous communities, such as the “crisis of civilization” prominent at
the Belém meeting and the spiritual ceremony important to many
communities, “simply failed to register” with non-Indigenous participants.
Instead, the Indigenous issues raised were reduced to modern left liberal
terms such as “the crisis of capitalism” or climate change issues.49 Race and
racism are also issues that have not been addressed successfully at the
WSF.50 Subaltern groups at the Forum have encountered similar obstacles
and patterns of appropriation, despite decades of participation.51 So, while
Indigenous and subaltern communities participate in limited but substantive
ways in the WSF, their contributions as participants in the democratic site
offered by the WSF are clearly not equal. While difference in identity or
national terms may seem strong at the WSF, the organization still struggles
to displace the Eurocentric character of its practice and theoretical analysis.
One encouraging note about the traces of centralized hierarchies that
remain in the organization is that most participants in the WSF show in
practice that they reject elite processes, and show little interest in the
centralized hierarchies that characterize many orthodox leftist movements,
whether of intellectual elites or professional activists.52 In this sense, the
WSF culture of “open space” and participatory process of organizing and
producing the forum has effectively sidelined the traditional modern
practice of centralized hierarchies that characterizes not only leftist
movements but also the transnational corporation and the modern electoral
state.

Conclusion

Three very different types of organization practice equality globally. The

different organizations working at the global scale have very different
relations to centralization. Both La Via Campesina and the WSF hold
regular global meetings, and the organizing process for those meetings is
centralized, though the regional and local arms of La Via Campesina may
do a better job of holding the organizers for global events accountable to the
full membership. Regional meetings of the GJM have a similar impact on
that movement. While some may prefer to see the GJM as a movement
rather than an organization, its networked organizing operates in some ways
at the limits of the division between organization and movement. The
decentralized character of the GJM means that its organizing is carried out
through networks or meshworks, creating an uneven process that is not
consistent across the different participating bodies. La Via Campesina’s
willingness to work with member organizations that include those more
well-to-do than small holders and the landless also presents a problem that
has plagued most work towards global equality: the active participation of
the poorest of the poor and subalterns.
Despite placing horizontal relations at the center of their project, the
WSF participants clearly have more work to do to put equality into practice.
Yet, their success in producing an organizational culture whose participants
show little interest in the centralized hierarchies that characterize many
orthodox leftist movements is important, and has been effective in avoiding
the sort of weaknesses that were seen in the post-2001 Buenos Aires
neighborhood networks, which were effectively disrupted by leftist political
party apparatchiks.
Various compromises with representative practices are found, whereby,
in addition to participatory mechanisms, La Via Campesina and the WSF
also use representative structures, such as regional coordinating committees
and international committees, in a manner comparable to the structure used
by the MST, discussed in Chapter 3. As we saw, some but not all of the
organizations in the GJM also use representatives, though some are chosen
by consensus rather than through majority elections, and some
organizations use them in conjunction with assembly practices. Each of
these compromises has been put into practice with a heightened awareness
of the risks of majority elections, failures of representative accountability,
and what one commentator has called the spectacle of participation, when
many participate in discussions but only a few make the actual decisions.53
The adoption of consensus practices and adjustments of the ordering of
speakers to favor those who have not spoken before are other
countermeasures developed in the GJM to attempt to counter remaining
inequalities.
Participants in these divergent approaches to democracy are still sorting
out their relationships in practice to race, class, gender, sexuality, and other
unequal structural mechanisms. In drawing on postmodernist criticisms of
identity-based movements, some of the practitioners of this approach have
not yet been able to recognize, historicize, and critique their own gendered,
racialized, socioeconomic class-based, and geographic or national
privileges as these impact their relations with movements centered in the
global South.54 Gender parity in La Via Campesina also follows the model
found in MST, whereby both men and women represent their regions and at
the ICC level, a practice not found in the WSF or the GJM. Additionally,
their use of a parallel organization, the International Women’s Assembly of
La Via Campesina, has produced an organized body to hold them
accountable to gender issues both in their advocacy work and in their own
organizing practices. Given the importance of broad accountability across
the many forms of equality in practice, this approach is notable despite its
still limited success.
The failure, seen in the GJM, of some networks to engage with
Indigenous and subaltern practices is one place where the Others of global
equality practices come into visibility. Both Indigenous and subaltern
approaches to equality in practice draw on different histories than do the
social movements of much of the world, as we saw in Chapters 2 and 3. As
the Indigenous and the subaltern participate in different ways in all three of
the organizations considered in this chapter, the presence in these
communities of divergent protocols, practices, and conceptual resources has
been a challenge to those working for global accountability and equality in
the organizations we just considered. This is one way in which democracy
with a differance is at work globally, even as it is, unfortunately, often
overlooked, marginalized, and constrained to limited impacts. These
appropriations limit equality in practice to those protocols, logics,
possibilities, and calculations that are already familiar, instead of opening
up democracy to its Others more effectively in the freedom of Other
(im)possible differences.
The group basis of participation in all three of these organizations
diverges from the individualism of modern liberalism and democracy. La
Via Campesina and networks like Global People’s Global Action in the
GJM allow members to join only as organizations, as does the WSF. This is
one way in which democracy with a differance is possible. Another is seen
in the divergent intellectual heritages they draw on, ranging from the
Indigenous and other local farmer traditions of resistance in the global
South to the urban anarchist practices so central to certain sectors of the
GJM and WSF. In drawing on multiple, at times overlapping theoretical
traditions and practices of the Others of the modern liberal state, these
global organizations bring democracy with a differance on a grand scale
into visibility. They do so in a manner that engages in multiple ways
beyond simple opposition to the European-modeled nation state; they
borrow and appropriate strategies, tactics, and concepts where useful, such
as when they turn to representative practices. As is seen elsewhere,
democracy with a differance at a global scale is clearly not a purely Other
practice.
Equality in practice has impacts for the smallholder farmers of La Via
Campesina, as the fight for the family farmer in national and
intergovernmental policy arenas continues. By slowing the invasion of free
market policies in some nations, and by strengthening their resources for
global resistance to neoliberal inequality growth, some small farmers
produce conditions in which they can continue their agrarian lifestyles
rather than being run out of business by industrial farming. Victories in
policy and increased criticism of neoliberal and industrial agriculture
policies have resulted from the campaigns of La Via Campesina at the
national level, as seen in Brazil, and at the global level in the defeat of the
WTO Doha Round and the FTAA. The achievement in Brazil increased
equality by strengthening the economics and policy of smallholder farmers,
while the WTO Doha Round and FTAA victories helped slow the dramatic
increase in inequality resulting from these neoliberal policies.
The decentralized character of the GJM produces a failure of consistency,
which is often a goal for centralized organizations. The open character of
participation in the WSF, in the GJM, and in a different way in La Via
Campesina means that each organization or movement is criss-crossed with
multiple, changing differences. Each organization and the GJM movement
incorporate a wide range of communities and organizations that include
Indigenous and settlers, various racial groups, and men and women’s
organizations, each with multiple, overlapping histories and Others. Any
reference to these organizations and movements risks incoherence as a
result of these differences, a problem seen most clearly in the GJM, which
some would not recognize as a coherent, unified entity. We will return to
the issue of coherence in the Conclusion.
Global democratic practices are where the challenge of democracy with a
differance from modern liberal universalism is seen most clearly. Equality
for the WSF is understood in terms of horizontal social space driven by
consensus of multiple different stakeholders. In this sense, the value of
democracy is seen in the spread of such horizontal spaces across the world.
In contrast to the GJM, the WSF consistently declines to take particular
positions on policy, so equality cannot be measured using a policy
yardstick. Rather, it must be measured in a calculus directly opposed to the
centralized unequal structures of liberal electoral states, a calculus of
horizontal social space.
By contrast, the GJM measures equality through the lens of global
justice, a calculus that clearly exceeds the limits of democracy as practiced
by the modern liberal state. Rather than calculating justice in terms drawn
from English common law or other European legal regimes and their many
different derivatives in national court systems, justice for the GJM is
defined in terms directly opposed to the terms found in the organizations
that are pressing global corporate advantages on all nations: the IMF, the
World Bank, the states that joined the WTO. Rather than using quantitative
calculations that foreground export–import trade or gross domestic product,
for example, the GJM presses for attention to incomes, educational quality,
health care, and social services for the poor and other beneficiaries of the
social safety nets shredded by neoliberal policies and loan programs. Rather
than advocating for universal rights, as liberal democracy often urges, GJM
participants interrupt the narrow focus of human rights, broadening the
range of discussion to interrogate the social, economic, cultural, and bodily
violence of neoliberal policies.55 By asking about increased morbidity and
maternal mortality, reduced life expectancy, state kidnappings and attacks
on labor and other activists, and other outcomes of policy outcomes under
globalization, the GJM directs attention not to the abstract language of
rights but to the unequal bodily and other material effects of liberal
democracy. In doing so, it overturns the difference between democracy and
its others, demonstrating that democracy is often a cover for plutocracy or a
modern form of aristocracy, oligarchy, and in some cases autocracy.
When we ask how to determine whether equality has been realized on a
global scale, measures and time scales that are not part of the modern
calculus of equality are also useful. In terms drawn from La Via Campesina,
equality is closely tied to the ability to farm one’s own food in a manner
drawn from a local heritage culture.
This certainly means more than a small slowing in the invasion of
neoliberal policies into every corner of every country globally. Since the
reduction of family farming is tied to the long-term processes of enclosure
and the decline of the commons, urbanization and industrialization, the
mechanization of farming, and the post-World War II shift towards oil-
based and other chemical inputs, the preservation of the acreage farmed by
small family farmers might be measured in different scales. So, achieving
the “reality” of equality might be marked by the preservation of the uneven
percentages of family farms across the global South in the year of the
founding of La Via Campesina, or it might be measured by the universal
availability of an opportunity to the right to produce one’s own food within
one’s heritage culture. This mode of democratic equality directly challenges
the affiliation of the electoral state with private property regimes and
industrial capitalism, particularly with large agribusiness and other TNCs.
Yet, even this challenge is framed in terms deriving directly from European
enclosure and industrialization, terms that erase the sacred meaning of land
to many farmers in La Via Campesina, as seen in our discussion of the land
in MST in Chapter 3. So, while La Via Campesina may not have adapted its
goals to address the class, racial, or ethnic differences that produce
inequalities, it certainly confronts the liberal mode of democracy with
different meanings and values of democratic equality in practice.
Notes
1 Janet M. Conway, Edges of Global Justice: The World Social Forum and Its “Others” (New
York: Routledge, 2013), 101–3; Michael Menser, “Disarticulate the State: Maximizing
Democracy in ‘New’ Autonomous Movements in the Americas,” in Democracy, States, and the
Struggle for Global Justice, edited by Heather Gautney, Omar Dahbour, Ashley Dawson, and
Neil Smith (New York: Routledge, 2009), 251–72; Jeremy Gilbert, Common Ground:
Democracy and Collectivity in an Age of Individualism (London: Pluto Press, 2014), viii–ix.
2 David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years (Brooklyn: Melville House, 2011); Ellen Meiksins
Wood, Empire of Capital (New York: Verso, 2003), 150–94; Eric Toussaint, Your Money or Your
Life: The Tyranny of Global Finance (Pluto Press, 2005).
3 David Held, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan
Governance (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995); Jürgen Habermas, “Toward a
Cosmopolitan Europe,” Journal of Democracy 14, no. 4 (2003): 86–100,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/jod.2003.0077; Michael Goodhart and Stacy Taninchev, “New
Sovereigntist Challenge for Global Governance: Democracy without Sovereignty,”
International Studies Quarterly 55, no. 4 (2011): 1047–68; John Markoff, Waves of Democracy:
Social Movements and Political Change (Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 1996), 130–5.
4 Habermas, “Cosmopolitan Europe,” 86–100; Held, Global Order.
5 David Held, “Democracy, the Nation-State, and the Global System,” in Political Theory Today,
ed. David Held (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991), 196–235.
6 Concerns about the erosion of modern state sovereignty are shared by those on the right and the
left. After giving a brief overview of these arguments, Goodhart and Taninchev argue that global
interdependence makes popular sovereignty unworkable, and should be replaced with normative
oversight: Goodhart and Taninchev, “New Sovereigntist Challenge,” 1047–53.
7 Frank Cunningham, Theories of Democracy: A Critical Introduction (London; New York:
Routledge, 2002), 205; Lydia Liu, “Legislating the Universal: The Circulation of International
Law in the Nineteenth Century,” in Tokens of Exchange: The Problem of Translation in Global
Circulations, ed. Lydia Liu (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999), 152–9; Lydia Liu,
“The Question of Meaning-Value in the Political Economy of the Sign,” in Tokens of Exchange:
The Problem of Translation in Global Circulations, ed. Lydia Liu (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 1999), 23, 37.
8 Jeffrey Juris, Networking Futures: The Movements against Corporate Globalization (Durham,
NC: Duke University Press, 2008), 201–5; Nancy Fraser, “Transnationalizing the Public
Sphere,” 2005, www.republicart.net/disc/publicum/fraser01_en.htm, accessed September 8,
2016.
9 Aihwa Ong, “A Better Tomorrow?” The Struggle for Global Visibility,” Sojourn 12, no. 2
(1997); Gargi Bhattacharyya, Dangerous Brown Men (New York: Zed Books, 2008), 105, 138–
9.
10 Bhattacharyya, Dangerous Brown Men, 139–44; Fraser, “Transnationalizing.”
11 Philippe Schmitter and Terry Lynn Karl, “What Democracy Is … and Is Not,” in Democracy: A
Reader, ed. Larry Jay Diamond and Marc F. Plattner (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 2009), 15.
12 While this view is often held as an assumption in liberal political theory, an explicit formulation
is found in Amartya Sen, “Democracy as a Universal Value,” in Democracy: A Reader, ed.
Larry Diamond and Marc F. Plattner (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009). For
critiques of this notion, see Cunningham, Theories, 207; Liu, “Universal,” 146–8, 154–5; Naoki
Sakai, “Modernity and Its Critique: The Problem of Universalism and Particularism,” The South
Atlantic Quarterly, Postmodernism and Japan 87, no. 3 (1988): 475–504.
 George Caffentzis and Silvia Federici, “A Brief History of Resistance to Structural
13 Adjustment,” in Kevin Danaher, Democratizing the Global Economy: The Battle against the
IMF and World Bank (San Francisco: Global Exchange and Common Courage Press, 2001);
John Walton and David Seddon, Free Markets and Food Riots: The Politics of Global
Adjustment (Cambridge: Blackwell Publishing, 1994); Jessica Woodroffe and Mark Ellis-Jones,
“States of Unrest: Resistance to IMF Policies in Poor Countries,” World Development
Movement report (London), September 2000.
14 Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (New York: Metropolitan
Books, 2007), 7, 12, 76–84.
15 Juris, Networking Futures, 288–99; Rodrigo Nunes, “Networks, Open Spaces, and
Horizontality: Instantiations,” Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organizations 5, no. 2 (2005):
297–318, www.ephemerajournal.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/5-2ephemeramay05.pdf.
16 Juris, Networking Futures; Arturo Escobar, “Actors, Networks, and New Knowledge
Producers,” in Cognitive Justice in a Global World: Prudent Knowledges for a Decent Life, ed.
Boaventura de Sousa Santos (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2007), 273–94.
17 della Porta and Rucht, “Power and Democracy,” 1–22.
18 Jamie King, “The Packet Gang,” Mute 1, no. 27 (Winter/Spring 2004), accessed August 29,
2016, quoted in Rodrigo Nunes, “Nothing Is What Democracy Looks Like: Openness,
Horizontality, and the Movement of Movements,” in Shut Them Down! The G8, Gleneagles
2005 and the Movement of Movements, ed. D. Harvie, K. Milburn, B. Trott, and D. Watts
(Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 2005), 302.
19 Jo Freeman, “Tyranny of Structurelessness,” www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm, accessed
August 29, 2016, quoted in Nunes, “Nothing,” 304; Cristina Flesher Fominaya, “Debunking
Spontaneity: Spain’s 15-M/Indignados as Autonomous Movement,” Social Movement Studies
14, no. 22 (2015): 151, doi: 10.1080/14742837.2014. 945075.
20 Donatella della Porta, “Consensus in Movements,” in Democracy in Social Movements, ed.
Donatella della Porta (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 80–5.
21 Fominaya, “Spontaneity;” Stuart Hodkinson and Paul Chatterton. “Autonomy in the City?
Reflections on the UK Social Centres Movement,” City: Analysis of Urban Trends, Culture,
Theory, Policy, Action 10, no. 3 (2006): 305–10, doi: 10.1080/ 13604810600982222; Pierpaolo
Mudu, “Resisting and Challenging Neoliberalism: The Development of Italian Social Centers,”
Antipode 36, no. 5 (2004): 917–41.
22 Janet Conway and Jakeet Singh, “Radical Democracy in Global Perspective: Notes from the
Pluriverse,” Third World Quarterly 32, no. 4 (2011): 61–84, doi:
10.1080/01436597.2011.570029; Marina Sitrin, Everyday Revolutions: Horizontalism and
Autonomy in Argentina (New York: Zed Books, 2012), 19–25.
23 Conway and Singh, “Radical Democracy;” Conway, Edges, 111, 174 n24.
24 Juris, Networking Futures, 208–9.
25 Donatella della Porta, “Deliberation in Movement: Why and How to Study Deliberative
Democracy and Social Movements;” Acta Politica 40 (2005): 336–50, 337–9, doi:
10.1057/palgrave.ap. 5500116.
26 della Porta and Rucht, “Power and Democracy,” 7.
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid., 10.
29 Annette Desmarais, La Vía Campesina (Pluto Press, 2007), 3–4, 21–7, 55–60.
30 Ibid., 21, 25, 86.
31 Ibid., 74–85.
32 La Via Campesina, “The Right to Produce and Access to Land,” 1996, reprinted in Food
Sovereignty, ed. Hannah Wittman, Annette Aurélie Desmarais, and Nettie Wiebe (Halifax,
Fernwood Publishing, 2010), 197–9.
 33 Ibid., 90–8, 157.
34 Desmarais, La Vía Campesina, 24–4, 28–30; Agarwal, “Food Sovereignty,” 1248.
35 For an overview of introductions to consensus decision processes, see Appendix 2.
36 La Via Campesina, “Gender Position Paper,” 170–6.
37 Desmarais, La Vía Campesina, 162–80.
38 Ibid., 86.
39 Agarwal, “Food Sovereignty,” 1256.
40 João Pedro Stédile, “Landless Battalions, ” New Left Review 15 (May–June, 2002): 100.
41 Huber, “Food Revolution”.
42 Conway, Edges, 3.
43 Ibid., 78–9.
44 Ibid., 12–16.
45 Ibid., 2–3, 6–10.
46 Ibid., 58.
47 Ibid., 13–14.
48 Paul Routledge, “Acting in the Network,” Environment and Planning D 26 (2008): 36–65.
49 Conway, Edges, 60.
50 Conway, Edges, 60–2.
51 Conway, Edges, 9–11, 21–4, 28–36, 55–6, 142–57.
52 Ibid., 63.
53 Polletta, “Participatory Democracy,” Contemporary Sociology 42, no. 1 (2013): 46.
54 Conway, Edges, 106–12.
55 Klein, Shock, 118–21.

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Part III
Concrete Outcomes of Equality in
Practice
6 Everyday Democracies
Daily Equality in Practice

Where is democratic equality really found, if not in the ballot box? The
equalizing practices discussed in the previous chapters are inseparable from
a transformed everyday life. Participatory practices make demands on
people’s routines, taking time and weaving assembly-based relationships
into life beyond the days and times of assembly meetings. Heritage
practices and political organizing to produce equality in economic relations,
relations with the land, gender relations, colonizer–colonized relations,
spiritual relations, and other inequalities often impact many aspects of life.
While we consider some of these relations in the Conclusion to come, in
this chapter, daily life impacts of equality in practice are our focus.
Survival for these transformative practices takes work, daily work. Equal
social relations survive while surrounded by the inequalities of most other
relations by transforming daily life.1 We have already seen how the
practices already discussed are often shaped by the specific histories that
make them conceivable and historically possible, and facilitate and
strengthen them. This chapter presents some of the ways in which the
particular sites already discussed both grow out of and impact concrete
practices of equality in everyday life. Then we will turn to some specific
sites where participatory, direct democracy shapes life across multiple
areas.
The everyday swims with forces pressuring us into established and
readily understood social relations, relations that are almost invariably
unequal, as does every line of every page of this book. For those driven to
change habitual routines by the inequalities, and at times the sheer violence,
of modern social relations, there is a strong incentive to act differently, to
produce equality and reduced violence somewhere. For some, the enforced
racial and other social categories and the public sphere of political relations
are not safe spaces free of violence, but instead impose the reason and force
relations that become a “liberal mode of social coercion.”2 Instead, the play
of multiple differences and Others around bodies may be refigured to reject
violent or surreptitious appropriations and redirected to produce equal
participation.3 Rather than these decision points being seen as grounded in a
stable individual or group, the constant flow of multiple overlapping and
conflicting constitutive forces and options operating on individual and
collective subjects produces a changeable, fragile, and unstable set of
circumstances.4 People working in specific settings may produce a “we”
that is defined first and foremost not by hierarchy, but by the rejection of
inequality.
Equalizing the everyday is a big project. Yet, the everyday shivers and
shakes all the time, rendered unstable by the many gaps, weaknesses,
excesses, supplements, strategies, tactics, and differences at work. Since
everyday life requires repeated efforts to shape the group or private, internal
sense of the self through practice, at times there may be slippage or
collapse, misbehaviors, errant attempts, loss of patience and failures of
endurance,5 dysfunctions, creative moments, and openings to reversals of
unequal relations. These moments are sites for producing the singular, the
divergent, the Other to the normative attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors that
support established unequal relations of structures and institutions,
indicating their persistent failure at complete subjection for all at all times.6
These failures and refusals of appropriations under the limits of the same by
the Other open up what at times may seem like immovable structures.
Instead, patterns of practice may shift into sites for freedom, for practices
that revive and resurrect, institute and install, proclaim and perform,
constitute and even conjure those equalizing practices that were once
denied or demonized as unnecessary, outdated, naïve, idealistic, immoral,
unethical, untrue, wrong, or just plain impossible.
Inequality is only incompletely enforced by established structures and
institutions, such as identity claims by long-established social groups;
allegiance claims by the state; economic pressures rewarding subjection to
monopoly markets; or enforced unequal social practices in families,
religious institutions, and cultural production. There are also always already
alienations from sites where inequality is enforced in sometimes subtle and
other times overt or even openly violent ways. These alienations may
include experiences that contradict widespread narratives; dysfunctional
structures and institutions that fail to produce complete subjection from
their subjects; personal or collective transformations not recognizable to
established social groups; misnamings or failures of naming and translation
in dominant languages; forms of violence and demeaning or undignified
practices that come to be seen as unacceptable; ethical lapses or blind spots
that may begin to seem constructive; individual or shared feelings and
analysis that refuse to subside despite repeated enforcement attempts; or
awareness of Other belief systems, practices, and institutions not
remembered or not accepted as normal or moral in the surrounding
societies. These moments may disrupt and transform established social
relations, producing a “passage and departure toward the other” and an
opening which traditional concepts cannot effectively capture or colonize.7
If equality can’t be found, it can be built. We have seen in the previous
chapters that centralized social structures depend on specific historical
conditions and their arbitrarily narrowed outcomes, conditions that may be
changed through collective work for equality. Our everyday life confronts
us with constant decisions about membership in collectives, about how to
sort out where to align ourselves, about how to respond physically and
affectively to signs and terms we encounter. While we have habitual ways
to respond to these decisive moments, we are often aware of ways in which
our alignments might change as they are caught up in the divergent
directions and discordant embodiments that each invites. These directions
and embodiments are shaped differently in each encounter with competing
pressures, overlapping enforcement mechanisms, and diverse horizons of
possibility that come from relations with individuals and groups,
institutions and structures, and interior abilities to tolerate the discomfort
and violence we perpetrate on ourselves. Sometimes, that violence comes
from social conditions; other times, it comes from the forceful subjection of
the individual or community to beliefs and practices surrounding us.
Creative agency leading to difference may come from

minor engagements … [that] are cautious, modest, pragmatic,

experimental, stuttering, tentative. They are concerned with the here
and now, not with some fantasized future … and frequently arise in
“cramped spaces”—within a set of relations that are intolerable, where
movement is impossible, where change is blocked and … they seek to
engender a small reworking of their own spaces of action.8
Small gaps and tears caused by changing conditions and options in our
habitual routines make up the everyday tissue of our lives, and we shape
our social relations through decisions to open these tears further for new
practices or to suture them to return to established routines.9 Because such
engagements with open violence and more subtle enforced subjections often
occur across entire social sectors, collaborative democratic practices can
connect up with others and “cause them to fluctuate, waver, and reconfigure
in wholly unexpected ways.”10 Such events introduce the singular into the
present, displacing enforced norms and authoritative namings in ways that
change not just language but also history, not just imaginations but also
practices, not just the horizons of the possible but also the politics of the
real.11
As communities and individuals begin this process, they often come
across sites where equality and shared collective work are already being
practiced. Questioning the limits of negotiated social relations can be very
productive in finding already existing practices that are kept “just outside
vision” and prevented from becoming part of knowledge.12 Individuals and
groups who articulate widely shared problems may instead revive forgotten
institutions, or build local autonomies, or network with others abroad to
experiment with something more equalizing, or practice decentralized
collective participation with others in their intimate and other daily relations
to make the unimaginable real. Rather than turning to unequal practices that
provide the historical context for many of the equalizing practices already
discussed, community and movement members often seek out the
overlooked, hidden, neglected, forgotten, forbidden, open secret,
impossible, and unimaginable modes of equal social relations that surround
us all to put them into practice. Some have even called these efforts “ethics”
or “politics.”13
This work may produce tremendous freedom for participants. As they
strengthen their skills under different circumstances at finding openings for
equality, it is possible to experience a type of freedom that the Caribbean
theorist Frantz Fanon termed “the zone of occult instability where people
dwell.”14 Other notions of this freedom focus on the renegotiation of social
norms and roles that enforce social and economic inequality. Rather than
assuming that individuals operate independently of others, freedom then
becomes possible in relation to others, as power relations with one’s Others
are shaped by specific interactions on a day-to-day and moment-to-moment
basis.15 In this approach to everyday freedom, the challenge is to build and
cultivate/nurture a “possible field of action” that installs equality rather than
inequality.16 Drawing on the contingency of power relations and the field of
action, relations with others may be reconfigured and transformed through a
“freedom born out of interaction with relations of power … to shape their
own government.”17
This freedom and unpredictability are both the greatest strength of, and
the greatest challenge to, equality in practice. They are its greatest strength
because drawing on a wide range of participants provides tremendous
tactical resources to the organization, and because freedom can be very
appealing to those who feel they have little or none.18 They are its greatest
challenge because communities and movement organizations must establish
routines and consistent practices to persevere when surrounded by
inequality, and most familiar routines and rules reproduce hierarchy and
inequalities. Establishing these routines and rules can be draining and
exhausting for those in the early generations of organizations or new
communities. Freedom and unpredictability can also be challenging for
those of us accustomed to routines, predictability, expected social norms,
and that which is familiar under inequality to structure our daily lives and
for our peace of mind. Modern forms of governmentality are ultimately
enforced by the self-regulation and self-surveillance of individuals who
have subjugated themselves to modern social inequalities.19 Since freedom
and unpredictability take some time to become new types of familiar and
fulfilling practices, we will see in this chapter how different communities
and organizations have responded to this challenge. Through collectively
building equalizing structures, the inequality produced by the apparent
immovable “structures” that seemed so “real” become recognizable as
fabulations conjured by the interested parties who stabilize and enforce
them as normal and natural.20 Each moment presents decision points shaped
by multiple and often competing forces. Each moment is limited only by the
range of possibility and the willingness to be imaginative in engaging in
historical conditions.
Communities and organizations consolidate their differences with their
Others on an everyday basis through their practices, determining and then
revising criteria for membership, exclusions that constitute their politics,
and often distinctions and unequal power relations between central and
marginal members. Each of these consolidations is risky even while
necessary, establishing new outsiders and even enemies while also
producing the boundaries that stabilize the group within the terms and
logics of their day and place. Communities and organizations that make
consensus decisions are always also already criss-crossed by differences,
not only between individuals and the group but also within each individual
subject and group, since each member works within complex lines of
difference shaped by their Others within and beyond the limits of the group.
These differences in some cases have led the group to revisit their
decisions, reflecting critically on past performances and changing direction
as needed, as we have seen.

Equality in Daily Life

There are many names for everyday equality. Historically speaking, many
shared forms of equal or balanced collective work and self-governance
operated across daily life as the normal, as is captured in the Indigenous
saying “For all my relations.”21 With the spread of the modern, European
promise of equality during the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, many
came to expect equality in practice, not just in principle, leading to
campaigns for equal citizenship and voting rights and other aspects of the
formal political sphere. Others simply came to call equality “dignity,” a
broad term that made its way into the U.N. Charter and the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. Widespread use of consensus practices in the
1960s and 1970s across Europe, North America, and other European settler
colonies put equality into practice in many aspects of daily life. These
undomesticated efforts to practice equality were also known by such widely
used phrases as “beloved community,” terms found among participants in
the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and elsewhere in the
United States.22
Those who believe that democracy requires active participation from a
broad range of social sectors have often argued that participation begins in a
wide range of locations well outside the town hall meeting or the ballot box.
Democratic activists attempting to promote democratic behaviors in nations
where many have resigned themselves passively to inequality have focused
on organizations from what they call civic society: families, religious
organizations, cultural associations, sports clubs, economic institutions,
trade unions, student associations, political parties, villages, neighborhood
associations, gardening clubs, human rights organizations, musical groups,
literary societies, and others.23
The most direct way in which equality in practice shapes aspects of life
outside of self-governance is in sites where communities practice
participatory democracy. Many of the sites discussed in earlier chapters are
such sites: Indigenous communities; MST settlements; 15-M town squares;
Organización Frente Popular Francisco Villa de Izquierda Independiente
(OFPFVII) in Mexico City; Occupy movements in town squares in the
United States;24 and others. In these communities, equal participation in
governance shapes a broad array of activities, including securing and
preparing food, shared labor, family household management, spare time and
leisure activities, and many other parts of life. Similar impacts are seen in
the effects of neighborhood associations in post-2001 Argentina, where
equality in practice reshapes emotional relations of neighbors as well as
shared work arrangements that now include collective schooling, health
care, and other practices formerly left to the state.
We have seen that democratic participation has impacts outside of
politics and governance, including material impacts. For example, the
Settlers’ Movement in Caracas, discussed in Chapter 3, issued a manifesto
in 2011 for democratizing urban life in other ways beyond the right to
housing.25 The Aymara ayllu system distributes labor not only for food
production but also for community events such as seasonal festivals. The
Zapatista movement was able to achieve successes that completely
transformed the lives of movement participants when they secured
sovereignty over large tracts of land taken from large landowners during
and after the armed uprising of 1994. This land provided many landless and
small landholders with sufficient land to farm for subsistence, changing
dramatically their ability to provide their own food and dignity. The MST
movement in Brazil also has gained access to land for many participants.
This has a significant impact on the areas of work, food resources,
medicines, and other ways in which the land is important to the Indigenous
and other participants who know the broad array of resources it provides.
Factory workers in Buenos Aires and other industrialized areas in Argentina
who had become unemployed or lost their jobs due to IMF-imposed
austerity measures are now able to attain control over “recuperated”
factories, also impacting their work and income. While these successes
were met with armed interventions from the police in Brazil and Argentina
and from the Mexican military and paramilitary in Chiapas, Mexico, they
do provide new resources, such as food, that impact people’s daily lives.
Access to social services denied to the poor has also been achieved
through self-governance. Residents and participants in the social centers
movement in Italy, England, Spain, and other European countries retain
housing and other buildings for social services through squatting. The
Medico Friend Circle organization targeted its efforts at increasing available
health care to the poor, as did the Zapatista health clinics and those
developed by neighborhood associations in Argentina after 2001. The
successes by the Scrap Collectors of Pune, India produced increased
recognition from the Indian government that had broad impacts on their
health care and other areas of life. Many communities that practice equality
have reclaimed their schools. The Iroquois have been able to design their
own educational institutions, as have the Zapatistas and many neighborhood
councils in Buenos Aires and other areas of Argentina. The 15-M
movement in Spain organized local libraries, and the social center
movement squats often provide various reading, educational, and cultural
activities for local residents. All of these outcomes of shared governance
and struggle change daily life in many ways.
Successes in producing gender equality have been documented in our
chapters. Women’s leadership characterized some movements from the
start, such as the Settlers’ Movement in Caracas, the Sangtin movement in
India, and, of course, Sista II Sista in Brooklyn. Zapatista efforts at gender
equality have clearly not been entirely successful, but major women leaders
did emerge in the first decade of the movement. The Zapatista “Women’s
Law” and prohibition of alcohol have significantly reduced domestic abuse
of women, and have transformed home life in many ways. Equalizing
protocols for selecting representatives in the MST movement in Brazil, the
15-M movement in Spain, and the global La Via Campesina have also
brought women into leadership roles and trained them in various important
social and political skills.
Sometimes, having multiple forms of governance at work can impact
daily life in multiple ways. For example, democracy in the overlapping
Mohawk context in southeastern Canada is shaped in multiple, competing
ways that have varying degrees of congruence with the European settler
forms of representative democracy, depending on the specific practice
examined. Even in such basic functions as the selection process for an
elected body, such as band council elections, the electoral process may be
parodied and mimicked by community members in the daily performance
of the duties of electoral representation, debate, and policy decisions.26 Such
uses of parody and mimicry carry out the serious duties of eroding the
sovereignty of modern settler electoral practices in order to weave the fibers
of Mohawk democracy together to create Mohawk democracy by

names that Kahnawakero:non have for each other, the categories that
they place on each other’s being … through what people say to each
other, by what they say about each other … how “place” in the world
is staked out and guarded through the defining moments of shared
experience and the words that then give shape to this experience.27

The fine-grained nuances of everyday naming, categorization, and other

practices invite us to “rethink the history and vocabulary that is constitutive
of their own society and its relationship with others.”28
Some organizations and communities also have used inequality against
itself. They may do so by aligning themselves with one form of inequality
in an effort to fight other inequalities, or they may work within an unequal
representative system by holding it accountable to an egalitarian practice
such as the assembly. For example, an Indigenous woman may affirm her
indigeneity, defined by gender difference, to assert equality through a
masculine space, such as the Iroquois Longhouse, or against colonizing
economic or military policies of a nation state. Or she may work for
equality in an Indigenous assembly process to reject the inequalities of an
armed movement fighting the nation state, as Rigoberta Menchú did.29 The
hybrid forms combining assemblies with representative practices are
examples of these attempts to counter inequalities in MST and La Via
Campesina. In one moment affirming solidarity with a “we” that
subordinates women, such as some Indigenous or other community
“traditions,” then strategically shifting to an agile rewriting of tradition in
response to contingent circumstances, those who want equality will find
their way.30
As in our other chapters, the terms by which equality in practice shapes
activities outside of the narrow conception of the political may present
aspects difficult to name or recognize in modern terms. For the Longhouse
community heritage, for example, land could not be privately owned and,
indeed, is an important sacred force, but community members in the present
day have adapted to stabilize their lifestyles under colonial property law.31
Yet, the meaning of the land continues to shape different aspects of life
where participants rely on or engage with the land, such as cooking food in
the kitchen, which may at times carry a sense of the sacred. It is difficult
under the terms of modern secularism to make sense of this spirituality, yet
consistently across multiple Indigenous groups, land is seen as a spiritual
entity with whom the community engages in its everyday practices.32

Democratic Intervals: Intercontinental Youth Camp

Many other movements for the democratization of everyday life may be

found. Not all equality in practice is designed to last. One such site bringing
together the World Social Forum (WSF ) and the Global Justice Movements
are the youth camps at the World Social Forum meetings, sometimes called
the Intercontinental Youth Camp (IYC). The WSF youth camps’ main goal
is to make not a permanent claim on a social space but a temporary one. By
training young participants at the annual WSF meetings, youth camps
produce the experience of horizontal participation through managing daily
affairs. These temporary settlements began in 2001 as cheap
accommodation for youth participants at the first meeting of the WSF, but
grew to house some 15–20 percent of the total participants in early WSF
meetings in Brazil and beyond. Many of the strongest supporters of
horizontal, consensus-based practices at the WSF came from the autonomist
Marxist and anarchist traditions that were an important presence in the
global justice movements of Europe and North America. Their work also
draws on the long traditions of horizontalist participation in Indigenous
communities and subaltern movements discussed in Chapters 2 and 3. They
work at each forum to build a social space that enacts, rather than simply
debates, alternatives to life under unequal relations of market economies
and representative nations, and the IYC is one such space.33
Residents in the WSF youth camp, unlike many who attend the WSF
meetings, live on the forum site in tents and learn about open space and
horizontal governance by living it all day, every day, during the forum
meetings. These spaces are contingent, open, unpredictable, and designed to
oppose incorporation, appropriation, and homogenization as a normative
standard for a consensus society-wide, majoritarian project.34 Life at the
IYC practices nonhierarchical, consensus-based forms of management and
governance across a wide range of aspects of everyday life: constructing the
camp itself; planning and sharing physical space; providing food and water;
managing waste; ethical forms of exchange and consumption; and ensuring
safe and respectful social relations. Through a cooperative division of labor,
the preparation and day-to-day functioning of a decentralized system of
campsites are carried out in a participatory way, incorporating self-
reflection that sustains the cooperation during the week-long forum.35 As a
temporary space taking many months to plan and lasting only a few days,
the IYC provides its participants with multiple opportunities to constitute
new norms for social relations and material relations at each new forum.36
Democracy at the IYC is tied not to the state but to a mobile transnational
entity, the WSF, linked not to territory or land but to global justice as an
issue. Rather than a fixed structure, the anarchist and autonomist traditions
that give rise to the IYC each year or two are based in a flexible set of
practices designed to upend the unequal hierarchies and other power
relations central to the modern state. The main outcome of the IYC is
horizontal space, the primary goal of the WSF. While this may not seem
very concrete to those oriented to the economic terms of market capitalism,
it is part of one of the great successes of the WSF: training future
generations in collective participatory practice.

European Social Centers

A more enduring set of everyday practices producing equality may be found

in the various social center traditions in Europe. Here, I focus on social
centers active from 2005 to 2008 in the United Kingdom, but this tradition
also remains strong in Italy, Spain, and Germany among other locations.37
Social centers emerged in many parts of Europe in response to political
policies that replaced the public spaces associated with twentieth-century
division of labor and assembly manufacturing by the more flexible
accumulation and privatization associated with the neoliberal practices of
the 1970s. They drew on specific social practices that remained alive or
were remembered by participants in different ways in different nations:
worker associations, mutual aid societies, cooperatives, neighborhood
communities, feminist and youth centers, and the nineteenth-century
tradition of “people’s houses” in Italy, France, and Belgium. Open spaces,
such as town squares and urban plazas, public schools and universities,
union halls and leftist political party offices, often did not survive this
transition in either authoritarian nations, as in the one-party government of
the Christian Democrats in Italy or fascist Spain, or in multiparty electoral
nations such as England or Germany.38 Operating within the tradition of
autonomous Marxism and horizontal governance, the centers also have
strong ties to anarchist practices.39
As a way of reclaiming these spaces, the movement to build social
centers emerged in these locales. Participants in twenty-first-century social
centers in England work with a heritage also shaped by some 250 Italian
social centers at the height of their success in the late 1970s and into the
1980s, as well as the successes of the squatter movement of the 1980s, a
movement that at one time was at work in some 3,500 buildings and houses
in the Netherlands, 9,000 in Berlin, and 11,000 in London.40 Social centers
in this lineage serve their local communities in a variety of capacities, such
as bookshops and free shops, cafés and bars, food co-ops, and meeting or
event spaces.41 Based in cooperatively owned, rented, or squatted sites, this
network of sites centered their practices on collective consensus decision-
making practices to self-manage their commons or shared spaces, often
drawing on formal training in consensus building and conflict mediation,
but at times leaving unexamined lingering power inequalities and informal
hierarchies. A handful of social centers and other comparable groups do
attempt to reduce inequalities emerging around gender, race, and class
differences through such tactics as formally designating time for sharing
grievances, further formal training, or inclusivity groups.42 In these ways,
the social centers are comparable to other practices in other regions, such as
15-M in Spain and the Occupy movement in New York and other cities in
the United States.
Participants in social centers produce important relations to surrounding
economic and cultural exchange networks that diverge from normative
behaviors while simultaneously reinforcing norms. One phrase that captures
this life characterizes their work as “anti-, despite-, and postcapitalist,”
embedded but not trapped in capitalist exploitation while making space for
activities that operate parallel to capitalist market and cash exchanges.43
This produces an ambivalent identification with capitalism, both for and
against, which is much more than a contradiction or paradox: indeterminacy
and undecidability of identifications are the mark of the failure of
determinism and of freedom. Other binaries were at times questioned by the
practice of what some call “border crossings,” which were conscious
attempts to co-create common spaces managed jointly by all who used the
space rather than by a predetermined insider group. When structures prove
to be failures or dysfunctional at determining behaviors, exchanges, and
other social relations,44 then new horizons and limits emerge to shape
futures configured not by binaries such as capitalist/anticapitalist, but by
other differences that diverge from those differences the modern regime
attempts to enforce.45
These centers carry out daily forms of resistance to the policies of the
electoral state and its transnational collaborators just by surviving while
under-employed or unemployed. They operate at the important meeting of
the local outcomes of globalization and the Global Justice Movement.
Equality for the social centers is grounded not in individual rights but in
collective practices, particularly shared decision-making regarding common
spaces. By managing their affairs, they practice equality within limits
locally in terms that are Other to the modern electoral state and that diverge
in some respects from global capitalism.

Feminism in the Guatemalan Highlands

Feminist movements that center their practices on difference respond to

forms of inequality such as that seen in social violence as a mode of
political accountability, working to produce a new political culture
“founded on commitments to deep democracy and deep diversity.”46
Feminist groups such as the Colectivo Feminista Cotidiano Mujer (Daily
Women’s Feminist Collective) work to “creatively combine the daily tasks
with the deployment of the imagination to give a new twist to utopias.”47
Organizations such as the Articulación Feminista Marcosur (AFM) focus on
democratization carried out across social institutions in many areas of life
and also within social movements, so-called internal democratization, rather
than focusing solely on transforming the state. By organizing
intermovement dialogues in the WSF, such as at the 2003–9 Feminist
Dialogues and other settings, AFM’s work opens the possibility of
recognizing a multiplicity of social subjects, struggles, and strategies to
strengthen the presence of multiple worlds and acknowledge differences
within and beyond modern humanist terms.48
In the Guatemalan highlands, feminism with a differance takes place on a
daily basis. This work might be called “persistent short-term initiatives of
local self-management … against the financialization of the globe” that
brings subalternity to constructive crisis.49 In concrete political and ethical
terms, this means that rural feminists pursue many different projects, such
as “developing subsistence and small-and large-market farming … for the
constitution of the subject for … democratic freedom.”50 Indigenous
communities draw on their gender equity heritage in shared collective work
to establish gendered and other equalizing practices in their day-to-day
relations. These practices are still possible in Guatemala despite attacks
from the military dictatorship and electoral states, such as the U.S. 1954
intervention that removed an elected government and returned power to the
Ladino oligarchy. In the Guatemalan Highlands, which saw unfathomable
violence in the 1970s–1980s under the military onslaught, assembly and
gender equity practices have survived. After civilian rule returned in 1985,
private land ownership and patrilineal property regimes were further
expanded into Indigenous regions as the electoral state again attempted to
reclaim Indigenous lands for liberal postcolonial modes of law
enforcement.
The Indigenous communities of the Guatemalan highlands provide a
complex meeting of egalitarian assembly and other meeting practices,
shared communal labor relations, and gendered land management. The
assembly provides a central site for both managing a wide array of daily
affairs of the community and producing decisions that affect community
affairs. As the mechanism for selecting those who manage the k’ax k’ol
shared labor system, the assembly also shapes the regular system of work
that organizes and maintains the communal spaces of the community.
Through the embodied decision-making of the assembly, the appointed
managers are subjected to the communal decisions the assembly carries out,
rather than the decisions being delegated to an abstract entity.51 The
assembly also is the basis for self-governance and autonomy. A broad range
of matters are decided at the assembly, including the selection of specific
tree varieties to be used for reforestation projects, how to go about building
relations with other Indigenous communities under attack by the state, and
deciding how to manage community affairs while participating in
Indigenous uprisings responding to a law that declares their communal
lands uncultivated and available for corporate development.
Gender equality is an important question in the Highland Indigenous
communities, as it has been across many of the other specific sites
discussed. In the case of these communities, women’s participation in
communal labor gives them leverage over a patrilineal system of land title.
The patrilineal land title system emerged from Indigenous community
interactions with the private property regimes of colonial administrators and
the postcolonial state. The day-to-day practices are the site for the
collaborative forms of negotiated resistances at the meeting point of the
colonizing private property legal and economic practices, whereby women
are produced as disempowered in an unequal hierarchy, with the k’ax k’ol
communal labor system, where women share power. By refusing for
decades to grant sovereignty over their community lands to the legal and
economic practices of colonial and postcolonial private property regimes,
the Highland Indigenous communities assert not only their autonomy and
anticolonial resistance but also a willingness to consider equality for
women. They then negotiate the gendered terms of their autonomy through
the k’ax k’ol communal labor system as it is shaped in the assembly.52 In
exercising communal agency, they are able to renegotiate more gender
equality than would be possible under the unequally gendered relations
installed by the state regime of private property law.
Rather than allowing some fixed, timeless, essential Indigenous
“tradition” to determine their unequally gendered relations to the land, the
K’iche’ highlands communities performed their equalizing practice by
submitting not to the gender inequities of the state and market private
property regime but to their own heritage.53 As collective communities,
multiple informally networked webs of Indigenous villages worked with
cross-cutting histories of linguistic, cultural, and geographical differences to
put into place more gender equality than the modern regime would produce.
Their collective acts of freedom are not modern individualist modes of free
agency; nor do they carry out the fixed, essential practice of the pure
Indigenous; nor do they comply with the demands of the centralized
mechanisms of the state and the corporation, which benefit from the
patrilineal regime of private property commodification, production, and
legality. The flexibility demonstrated by this community in the face of the
violence of the modern liberal state draws on the multiple resources of the
assembly, strengthening them in the transformation of the Indigenous real
known as geontology.54
Equality here in the specific history of the Guatemalan highlands does
not spring from the imported, colonizing regime of individual rights, the
same rights that have been linked since the time of John Locke to private
property ownership. Equality derives from the shared responsibilities in the
k’ax k’ol communal labor system, in which gendered bodies participate on
an equal footing. The communal labor practices found in the Guatemalan
highlands are precisely those practices which were destroyed in the time of
John Locke throughout much of Europe to install the regime of land
ownership as private property and its associated patrilineal inheritance
practices. This regime has proved destructive to the environment and to
those humans who depend on native plants and other natural resources
through subsistence farming and swidden agriculture, and the collective
practices they entail have a broad impact on daily life in this region.

Conclusion

Democracy from an everyday practice perspective looks rather different

from the democracy of previous chapters. Equality in these everyday
practices is more than the assembly, more than the use of consensus, more
than rotating leadership positions and training the next generation that
equality is possible. Rather than being centered on governance, equality
spreads through the social fabric, changing work and food and gender and
health and cultural production.
Equality in everyday practice is based in these sites not on abstract
principles, such as citizenship or equal rights, but on embodied participation
and material outcomes. The embodied presence that makes direct
participation possible is important in the assemblies in all three sites, as we
have seen consistently throughout the book. In the WSF Youth Camps and
in the Indigenous Guatemalan highlands, systems of egalitarian work
distribution, rather than voting, are central to equality. Material goods such
as food production are important for the Guatemalan rural villagers, while
social services are more central in the urban social center tradition. Cultural
production is the focus in the WSF youth camp, done collectively with
global justice and equality in mind.
Democracy in these practices does not draw on the European electoral
state, but on its Others: the anarchist communities of modern Europe, the
Indigenous of Guatemala, and global youth participants at the WSF. As we
saw in Chapter 5, modern private property regimes are rejected in the
Guatemalan K’iche’ highlands, producing a democratic practice that
enables economic relations outside of the capitalist affiliations of liberal
electoral democracy. Since the Intercontinental Youth Camp is part of the
WSF, we encounter again democratic practices that take justice as their
criterion of measurement, rather than the freedom for corporations and the
wealthy that characterizes neoliberal democratic states; only this time,
justice is taken as the center of many aspects of everyday life, rather than
only the political project of the WSF or the Global Justice Movement.
As equality in practice spreads beyond political governance, it produces
effects in many aspects of life. Its practitioners no longer find that the
unequal lifestyle under capitalist corporations or the centralized state
constitutes the horizons of possible daily practices. This mode of life brings
the narrow terms of social mobility in hegemonic institutions such as the
working class or the middle class under capitalist exploitation to
constructive crisis through a refusal of enforced class divisions.55 Instead,
equality in practice produces democratic spaces that animate alternative
forms of full participation in shaping their own lives.56

Notes
1 Elizabeth Povinelli, Economies of Abandonment: Social Belonging and Endurance in Late
Liberalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 8–10; Michel De Certeau, The Practice
of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).
2 Elizabeth Povinelli, Empire of Love: Toward a Theory of Intimacy, Genealogy, and Carnality
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 165–6.
3 Povinelli draws on Foucault to develop this critique of Habermas in Empire, 167.
4 Foucault was also interested in the individuals’ own role in their constitution, since “he does not
see the self or the body as already existing or given to the (individual or collective) subject:”
Jeremy Moss, “Introduction,” in The Later Foucault: Politics and Philosophy (Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage Publications, 1998), 3. For Foucault, the practice of self-constitution was the center of
ethics, particularly ways of refusing to be determined by modern administrative science and its
attempts to structure the limits of the possible field of action of others: Michel Foucault, “The
Subject and Power,” Critical Inquiry 8, no. 4 (1982): 777, 785–9, www.jstor.org/stable/1343197.
Foucault called these ethical practices “techniques of the self ” or “arts of existence” or “care for
 the self,” ways in which the individual and collective self might be transformed with a certain,
limited type of freedom.
5 On endurance and its failures, see Povinelli, Abandonment, 3–5, 10–14, 31–2, 110, 132–4.
6 Here I draw on Derrida, Spivak, Foucault, and Meyda Yeğonoğlu rather than on Butler’s widely
influential rendering of performativity: Jacques Derrida, The Politics of Friendship, trans.
George Collins (New York: Verso, 2005), 12–22, 95–101; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Death of
a Discipline (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 27–34; Michel Foucault, “The
Ethics of the Concern of the Self as a Practice of Freedom,” in Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth,
ed. Paul Rabinow, trans. Robert Hurley, P. Aranov, and D. Mcgrawth (New York: The New
Press, 1997), 282–4, 291–300; Meyda Yeğonoğlu, Colonial Fantasies: Towards a Feminist
Reading of Orientalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 1–15. Persuasive
critiques of Butler’s substantive metaphysics include Herman Rapaport, The Theory Mess:
Deconstruction in Eclipse (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 110–16, 123–7, and
Christopher Peterson, “The Return of the Body: Judith Butler’s Dialectical Corporealism,”
Discourse 28, no. 2–3 (2006), 153–77, doi: 10.1353/ dis.0.0008.
7 Jacques Derrida, “Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas,”
in Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 83,
quoted in Rapaport, Theory Mess, 134–5; Foucault, “Ethics,” 290–2; Gayatri Chakravorty
Spivak, “French Feminisms Revisited,” in Outside in the Teaching Machine (New York:
Routledge, 1993), 167–70; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “The Politics of Translation,” in
Outside in the Teaching Machine (New York: Routledge, 1993), 180, 187, 196; Dean Mitchell,
Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications,
1999), 38; James Tully, “To Think and Act Differently: Foucault’s Four Reciprocal Objections
to Habermas’ Theory,” in Foucault contra Habermas: Recasting the Dialogue between
Genealogy and Critical Theory, ed. Samantha Ashendon and David Owen (Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage Publications, 1999), 94, 98. This approach to collective and individual subjects
declines to anchor the subject to substantive metaphysics or referents, and diverges from the
influential Althusserian and neo-Lacanian notion of the hailed, interpellated subject that has
been widely influential among academic theorists and some activist conceptions of resistance:
Rapaport, Theory Mess, 67–89, 134–46.
8 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans.
Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 279–80.
9 Foucault, “Ethics,” 290–2; Foucault, “Subject and Power,” 328–9, 340–2, 346–48; Elizabeth
Povinelli, “Beyond the Names of the People: Disinterring the Body Politic,” Cultural Studies
26, no. 2–3 (2012): 370–90, doi: 10.1080/09502386.2011.636206 383–4.
10 Deleuze and Guattari, Thousand Plateaus, 279–80.
11 Gilles Deleuze, “What Is an Event?” in The Deleuze Reader, ed. Constantin V. Boundas, trans.
Mark Lester and Charles Stivale (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 42–8; Gilles
Deleuze, Logic of Sense, trans. Mark Lester and Charles Stivale (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1990), 63; Derrida, Friendship, 18.
12 Povinelli argues that the freedoms of constitutional democracies are emphasized in Foucault’s
notion of self-fashioning and self-elaboration: Povinelli, Empire, 156–8.
13 Among the poststructuralist range of positions on ethics and politics, I would emphasize the
argument in Spivak for an ethics that gives attention to both the gendered international division
of labor and the polytheistic everyday in excess of European Enlightenment secularism. In this
view, the call to the ethical emerges from a general sense of originary relatedness, being-called-
ness, to be in excess and to be inadequate so that a “differantially contaminated other as a
subject of ethics” becomes possible within the limits of the imagination: Gayatri Chakravorty
Spivak, “Not Virgin Enough to Say that [S]he Occupies the Place of the Other,” in Outside in
the Teaching Machine (New York: Routledge, 1993), 173–8.
 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington (New York: Grove
14 Weidenfield, 1991), 227, quoted in María Josefina Saldaña-Portillo, The Revolutionary
Imagination in the Americas and the Age of Development (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
2003), 189.
15 Moss, “Foucault,” 161.
16 Foucault, “Subject and Power,” 221; Moss, “Foucault,” 155.
17 Michel Foucault, “On the Genealogy of Ethics,” in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow, vol.
3 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 3; Moss, “Introduction,” 5.
18 Francesca Polletta, Freedom Is an Endless Meeting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2002), 1–5.
19 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New
York: Vintage Books, 1995), 195–230.
20 Peggy Kamuf, “Introduction: Event of Resistance,” in Jacques Derrida, Without Alibi, ed. Peggy
Kamuf (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 11–14; Foucault, “Subject and Power,”
336–42; Rapaport, Theory Mess, 73–80, 115–17; Tully, “Act Differently,” 94–6; Kachig
Tololyan, “The Nation State and Its Others: In Lieu of a Preface,” Diaspora 1, no. 1 (Spring
1991): 3–5.
21 Glen Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014), 18.
22 Grace Lee Boggs, “The Beloved Community of Martin Luther King,” Yes! Magazine, May 20,
2004, www.yesmagazine.org/issues/a-conspiracy-of-hope/the-beloved-community-of-martin-
luther-king, accessed June 20, 2016.
23 Gene Sharp, From Dictatorship to Democracy (East Boston: Albert Einstein Institution, 2010),
22.
24 “OWS Kitchen Experiences and Next Steps—2012 Brooklyn Food Conference—May 12,
2012,” YouTube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGRRL7N4lM8, May 15, 2012, accessed July 6,
2016. I am grateful to Natalie Mark for bringing this resource to my attention.
25 Movimiento de pobladoras y pobladores, 2011, quoted in Juan Velásquez Atehortúa, “Barrio
Women’s Invited and Invented Spaces: Against Urban Elitisation in Chacao, Venezuela,”
Antipode 46, no. 3 (2014): 843, doi: 10.1111/anti.12072, accessed May 1, 2016.
26 Audra Simpson, “Paths toward a Mohawk Nation: Narratives of Citizenship and Nationhood in
Kahnawake,” in Political Theory and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, ed. Duncan Ivison, Paul
Patton, and Will Sanders (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 131–5.
27 Ibid., 135.
28 Ibid., 116.
29 Saldaña-Portillo, Revolutionary, 166–70.
30 Ibid., 158–63, 168–76; Povinelli, Empire.
31 Leanne Simpson, “Looking After the Gdoo-naaganinaa: Precolonial Nishnaabeg Diplomatic and
Treaty Relationships,” Wicazo Sa Review 23, no. 2 (2008): 29–42; Robinder Kaur Sehdev,
“Lessons from the Bridge: On the Possibilities of Anti-Racist Feminist Alliances in Indigenous
Spaces,” in This Is an Honour Song: Twenty Years since the Blockades, ed. Leanne Simpson and
Kiera Ladner (Winnipeg MB: Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 2010), 105–24.
32 Tara Williamson, “This Is a Ceremony,” in The Winter We Danced: Voices from the Past, the
Future, and the Idle No More Movement, ed. Kino-nda-niimi Collective (Winnipeg MB: ARP
Press, 2014), 379–85; Leo Killsback, “Native American Interventions and Resistance,” lecture
presented at Scripps College, Claremont, CA, April 29, 2016.
33 Janet M. Conway, Edges of Global Justice: The World Social Forum and Its “Others” (New
York: Routledge, 2013), 44, 91.
34 Ibid., 97–100.
35 Ibid., 44–5.
 36 Ibid., 96.
37 Andrej Holm and Armin Kuhn, “Squatting and Urban Renewal: The Interaction of Squatter
Movements and Strategies of Urban Restructuring in Berlin,” International Journal of Urban
and Regional Research 35, no. 3 (May 2011): 644–8, doi: 10.1111/j .1468–2427.2010.001009.x.
38 Pierpaolo Mudu, “Resisting and Challenging Neoliberalism: The Development of Italian Social
Centers,” Antipode 36, no. 5 (2004): 917–41, doi: 10.1111/j.1467–8330.2004.00461.x 917–21.
39 Paul Chatterton, Autonomy in the City? Reflections on the UK Social Centres Movement (Leeds:
np, 2006).
40 Trapese Collective, Do It Yourself: A Handbook for Changing our World (London: Pluto Press,
2007), 205; Mudu, “Challenging Neoliberalism,” 917.
41 Paul Chatterton and Jenny Pickerell, “Everyday Activism and Transitions towards Post-
Capitalist Worlds,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 35, no. 4 (2010), doi:
10.1111/j.1475–5661.2010.00396.x, 476.
42 Ibid., 481.
43 Ibid., 488.
44 Rapaport, Theory Mess, 137–8.
45 Ibid., 125–6, 133–40.
46 Conway, Edges, 131.
47 Lilian Celiberti, “Desafios feministas. Nuevos tiempos: Viejos desafíos. Reflexiones colectivas,
escrituras horizontales,” Revista Venezolana de Estudios de la Mujer 14, no. 33 (July–
December, 2009): 71.
48 Conway, Edges, 133.
49 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “1996: Foucault and Najibullah,” in Other Asias (Malden, MA:
Blackwell Publishing, 2008), 156, 330 n65.
50 Ibid., 157.
51 Gladys Tzul Tzul, “Sistemas de gobierno comunal indígenas: La organización de la
reproducción de la vida,” El Aplante 1, no. 1 (2015): 137–8.
52 Ibid., 134–7.
53 Ibid., 129, 139.
54 Elizabeth Povinelli, Geontologies: A Requiem to Late Liberalism (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 2016).
55 Spivak follows Paulo Freire in referring to these social sectors as “sub-oppressors:” Spivak,
“Najibullah,” 149.
56 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “More on Power/Knowledge,” in Outside in the Teaching Machine
(New York: Routledge, 1993), 45.

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Conclusion
Equality in Practice

These sites for equality in practice share horizontal participation and

consensus in governing their own affairs through meetings in common,
through the assembly. Rather than accept the weakened accountability to
the demos, the people, a weakness for which electoral practices have long
been known, these democratic sites claim equality through direct
participation. Through the embodied presence at the assembly, they resolve
one of the great weaknesses of electoral democracy: accountability of
democracy to all.
Another serious weakness of electoral democracy is also resolved
through these sites: unequal outcomes. In modern liberalism, equality is
performed in the abstract through the distribution of indirect, immaterial
rights, votes, liberties, constitutions, laws, and modern citizenship. Instead
of abstract ideas of equality granted in the form of the ballot box, these
embodied sites for equality in practice show that the people can produce or
obtain the concrete material resources that the modern liberal state policies
prevented them from obtaining: land, housing, food, jobs, education, safety
and well-being, fair budgets, and improved land, air, and water for future
generations. Instead of abstract equality under the law, these sites show that
participants build an autonomous social sphere, often outside of electoral
party systems and sometimes parallel to state legal regimes or capitalist
market practices. Instead of relying on founding documents from elites,
these sites show people shaping and renegotiating their own practices and
decisions. Instead of abstract citizenship granting a certificate or a passport,
these sites show participants building their horizontal social relations in
their own vision. Democracy with a differance produces equality through
both horizontal participation and its concrete, material outcomes.
 The failure of liberal democracy to enact equality occurs on an additional
register beyond universalism, materialism, and other limits. These Other
failures come into visibility through difference as it introduces Other terms
by which equality may be understood and calculated. We have seen these
terms scattered through different chapters: value for the land that exceeds
commodity value; love and solidarity; trust and safety; mística and the
imponderable; a desire for clean water and air for future generations;
ancestors and other spirits; and the sacred. These terms intervene in the
logic of objectification so central to modern truth regimes and interrupt the
commodification practices so central to the capitalism entangled with
liberal democracy. They invite us to consider other modes of equal
relationship, modes that may not seem material to the materialists of the
modern, but are still real in Other frames for calculating equality and for
self-governance. These Other terms refigure the political as equality with a
differance.
Equality here does not mean homogenized sameness or modern
universalism. Each site for practicing equality has specific histories and
compromises, strengths and weaknesses, and still some entrenched and
actively reproducing hierarchies. No utopia here. Just people collectively
practicing the impossible, without guarantees. No abstract universal ideas to
distract from equality. Instead, a rich array of concrete practices, specific
logics, practical problems, and targeted countermeasures.
Without a single unifying universal model or norm, democracy draws on
multiple frames and histories: democracies, not democracy. Without a
universal norm, the road ahead opens for democracies to proliferate beyond
electoral state practices. These differences prevent the formation of a single
center or an appropriation into any single community or movement, any
single conception of democracy that expels other possible practices from
the real. Difference interrupts the identification of democracy with freedom
alone, where freedom means liberal individual freedom to profit at the
expense of others or freedom from shared governance, from sharing power.
Instead, equality can serve as a line of questioning freedom, of asking
whether the limited forms of freedom serve all well, or only the few.
The cost of multiplicity and difference is incompleteness and a lack of
closure, but in these sites, democracy has not centered on completeness and
mastery.1 Rather, democracy becomes an ongoing interrogation of self-
governance about equality. Keeping questions of equality central to
democracy prevents closure that seals democracy into a fixed system of
entrenched inequalities. Participation by all in that questioning disrupts the
power of the few. The general meaning of the term “democracy” may be
prevented in this way from closing participants into the unequal practices of
the electoral state. If there are multiple democracies, some electoral and
many not electoral, some European and many non-European, some engaged
with the liberal state and many not engaged, then the claim of the liberal
state on all of us will have competition. The struggle between different
democracies has already begun, as the previous chapters have
demonstrated. Practice of multiple democracies rejects the electoral state at
the center of liberal pluralism. By putting democracy into practice in ways
that produce different forms of equality, these practices show that equality
is alive and well.

Equality is Possible

The historical record outlined here shows that participatory assemblies and
other mechanisms can produce equality in self-governance. Those who say
equality is impossible must confront the track record of these communities
and organizations. Those who say that participatory organizations do not
last long may want to consider the survival of many organizations for
decades, such as the MST, Sista II Sista, La Via Campesina, the Zapatista
movement, the social centers in Italy and the United Kingdom, and the
Argentinian legacy of the 2001 upheaval. Indigenous council practices such
as those of the Iroquois Longhouse and Aymara ayllu coalitions have
survived centuries despite the violent onslaught of the colonizers and their
democratic settler states, and are undergoing a resurgence in the present
day. Equating democracy with the spread of centralized hierarchies of the
European colonial and electoral state does these practices an injustice.
Those who say that consensus-based organizations cannot operate at a
large scale may be interested to know that the Aymara ayllu were successful
at their peak of the Katarist movement in 2000–2 at covering the entire
Andean plateau and parts of the valley of La Paz, impacting the entire
nation of Bolivia. Those who believe that equality in practice is inefficient
and slow to respond to crisis may be surprised to hear that the Zapatistas
have successfully responded to sophisticated Mexican paramilitary attacks
rapidly and effectively. Proponents of the forms of globalization that have
produced the wealth gaps of the neoliberal age may claim that equality in
practice is only possible at a small scale. Yet, we have seen that the hybrid
forms in Chapter 5 operate on a global scale, while the MST carries out its
movement across Brazil and the Karen do their work across national
boundaries. Those who take the modern nation state as the only possible
model for equality may find a movement like the Zapatistas hard to
imagine, since their caracoles are scattered here and there across the
southern Mexican landscape. Those who see the assembly and consensus
practices central to equality in practice as utopian may be surprised to find
communities in difficult or even impossible circumstances still following
these practices: Indigenous and subaltern communities, the unemployed and
the marginal, the rural landless and others living in life-threatening
circumstances.
Political scientists who claim the real for themselves may find the
decentering of the liberal state unthinkable in a discussion of democracy.
Yet, it is only by the self-proclaimed sovereignty of the modern state that its
reality is produced and enforced, and only by its misleading claim to
equality that assent to its practices is won. If democracy becomes the
marking of difference between the “real” democracy of the modern
electoral state and the sites for equality in practice in the previous chapters,2
then those political scientists may be asked to account for their support of
unequal outcomes unaccountable to the people. They may argue that
collective agency in the form of equal sovereignty is not powerful enough
to impact the state, but they would be reminded of the impact on the state
by the Zapatista autonomous settlements and the ongoing Karen resistance
movement, and by the 15-M occupations and the Caracas Settlers’
Movement. Ultimately, the narrow limits of the political that have been part
and parcel of the unequal effects of the modern state must come into
question.
None of the equality practices discussed above erases all social
differences. Equality in participatory democracy causes differences to
proliferate rather than erasing them in some fake consensus. By inviting
many to participate, the few are no longer able to claim that their own views
are shared by all. Instead, the many produce multiple proposals that serve as
a creative site for determining where the community will agree and where
debate will continue. This creativity turns out to be a major asset in
strategizing how to respond to ongoing inequalities. This is equality with a
differance in practice.

Countermeasures

Inequality is everywhere. So, those who practice equality must be quick to

respond to attempts to reinstall unequal social practices. We have seen how
the 15-M movement was reduced to a Spanish electoral party, how the MST
has not been able to dislodge three of its cofounders from its leadership
council, and how the Pune Scrap Collectors were transformed quickly into a
representative organization, with all the risks for inequality that form
entails. Yet, many groups have developed successful countermeasures to
inequality, summarized in Appendix 1.
The most important countermeasure to inequality within an organization
is the participatory assembly, which has been at the center of this book.
Consensus practices also attack always already existing inequalities within
assembly discussions. By allowing small groups or even individuals to
block a proposal or decision, consensus practices ensure that those who are
well informed and paying attention can say “no” to a measure or even
specific language that they do not feel fits their interests. Other
countermeasures to prevent particular individuals from becoming more
active than others in communicating and even in decision-making processes
include rotating tasks; distributing information frequently to all participants;
ensuring equal access to meetings and needed resources; and allowing
speakers who have not spoken previously to speak ahead of others.
When horizontal organizations are confronted with leadership that
attempts to put unequal practices in place, their members fight back to
reclaim the organization. The Sangtin KMS women transformed their
organization to take it away from the centralized leadership of the
government-funded organizers and retain control of their own affairs
themselves. We saw La Via Campesina women fight for more women’s
leadership in their structure. We have seen this in the successful pushback
by many local MST participants against the centralized, Cuban-style
leadership and top-down decision-making that were put in place in the early
1990s. This grassroots response within the organization produced collective
management accountable to local assemblies rather than traditional leftist
centralization. In other ways, these sites have been places where the many
take control of their affairs so that they may govern them through
democratic practices.
Planning for the long term characterizes much work for equality, in
contrast to the short-term focus of political party and nongovernmental
organization (NGO) fundraising campaigns. Participatory democracy has
proven itself as a powerful way to train Indigenous, women, the illiterate,
the poor, and others in skills required to govern their own affairs. By putting
in place formal and informal mechanisms that explicitly reject inequality,
groups disadvantaged by social practices and entrenched behaviors and
beliefs often can use these mechanisms to address unequal relations in
society. Participation in the context of consensus building may take forms
that would surprise those accustomed to centralized, hierarchical
organizations and other relations, forms that emphasize listening skills and
those who can summarize many different viewpoints in such a way that all
will agree.
Countermeasures require flexible structures, and a willingness to change
practices in response to appropriation attempts. Indeed, some see this
flexibility as a hallmark of democracy.3 The Zapatista transformation from a
centralized military movement to autonomous networked communities, the
shift from paid employees to a volunteer staff by Sista II Sista, and the
Karen willingness to leave a community and form a new one when
necessary are perhaps the limit cases for flexibility.

Hybrids and Compromises

Supporters of equality in practice must fight against changes to egalitarian

structures that promote unequal power relations. These reductions in
equality derive from many different sources. At times, they come from
weaknesses or loopholes in particular practices. Other times, they come
from hybrids and compromises due to particular pressures in concrete
historical circumstances. We have seen these compromises at work when
wealthy merchants shaped both Athenian democracy and the oligarchic
practices that emerged from the French and American Revolutions. They
may emerge in a time when an organization determines that efficiency and
time pressures are more important than hearing from every member, or
when those who prefer to determine agendas in advance are able to
persuade their peers that certain objections or issues do not belong in a
discussion. These compromises weaken the traction of the people in their
sovereignty over their own affairs.
The most common compromise has been a combination of assembly
structures with work done by representatives. Such compromises were
found in the Athenian aristocratic council as it shaped the work of the
assembly, and in the controversial turn towards electoral representation by
the eighteenth-century European and U.S. states. We have also seen such
compromises in these pages. We see Sista II Sista reserve the use of
assemblies only for critical issues, as did the El Alto Federation of
Neighborhood Councils (FEJUVE); they then use less time-consuming
decision structures for other topics. The workers’ councils in Argentina, as
workers’ councils historically have done, combine participatory assemblies
with elections, as do many organizations in the Global Justice Movement,
and they also experiment with different strategies for retaining
accountability to the assemblies. The Landless Workers Movement and La
Via Campesina and the Zapatistas all use representatives, but they are
sometimes selected by assembly consensus rather than by voting. The limit
case may be the increasing emphasis on electoral representatives by
Podemos in Spain, where the party has begun to use elected representatives
in municipal and national elections and also in selecting circle members
who will attend central meetings held in Madrid. Their countermeasure has
been to establish what is called a Commission for Democratic Guarantees,
whose members are elected, but not all have been satisfied that this will
protect equality in practice.
The use of representatives inevitably makes the organization more
centralized and less accountable to participants, so we have seen that
different organizations develop countermeasures to produce accountability.
Some have used assemblies, rather than voting, to select representatives, to
allow all to speak out against those candidates who may not be able to
represent the entire community well. The Iroquois give selection powers to
women as guardians of the general interest, giving a large portion of the
community responsibility for ensuring that governance responds to the
general interest. Another example is the deployment in some Buenos Aires
neighborhood councils of listeners, who silently accompany spokespersons
who will represent an entire community in interacting with other bodies but
who afterward report to the community whether they were satisfied with the
way the community’s views were represented. These are very direct ways
of guaranteeing accountability to a community assembly process for
representatives.
The previous chapters also included compromises with authoritarian
structures. The best known is perhaps the Zapatista combined governance
with assemblies and a military wing of the movement, the EZLN, which has
made it possible to respond to frequent paramilitary and counterinsurgency
attacks by the Mexican government and other opponents quickly and
effectively when needed. As the movement has evolved, they have worked
to establish a barrier between the autonomous governance of the JBGs or
Good Government Councils and the EZLN military forces, but the EZLN
still has an important role in the movement overall. Other communities and
groups have worked closely with highly centralized and unequal NGO and
INGO organizations, nonprofit organizations and even corporations, not to
mention the liberal state and autocratic states.
What do we take away from these different compromises and hybrid
forms? Certainly, they show the difficulties of leaving inequality behind, as
the practices and their logics and assumptions are deeply embedded in most
every modern person. Yet, they also show the creativity and multiplicity of
equality in practice, adapting to historical conditions in ways that often
allow new practices and structures to emerge from participatory decisions
involving all. While certainly the risk of appropriation increases in hybrid
structures, mixed forms also enact the refusal of rigid binaries, which may
be a strength in the long run.4 In the end, organizations and communities
must determine for themselves whether their compromises are effective in
achieving the forms of equality they have set as their goals. If not, then they
may certainly wish to transform their practices to make them more effective
at putting equality into practice.

Democracy with a Differance

Democracy does not always return to the European and settler colonial
electoral state or the Athens of Plato and Aristotle. The past chapters have
shown that democracy may also look for its models to the Iroquois
Confederacy or the Karen, to runaway slave and Canudos settlements, to
rural village structures or anarchist squats, or to many Other democracies
missing from the Greco-European lineage. Each specific history shapes
democracy in specific ways, giving meaning to terms and practices in
multiple, interacting and even contradictory ways that cannot be reduced to
a single entity known as “democracy.” Rather than the specific
compromises made by the wealthy and powerful in Europe and the United
States that produced the modern electoral state, these democracies have
made other compromises, taking them to other democratic practices and
institutions.
Equality in practice also diverges from specific histories that have shaped
liberal democracy in other ways. Both La Via Campesina and the K’iche’
communities of Guatemala render equality through farming one’s own food
and practicing one’s own heritage culture. By rejecting the long-term
colonizing processes of enclosure, urbanization, and the mechanization of
farming and other agribusiness practices, these two sites for equality in
practice challenge the affiliation of the electoral state with private property
regimes and industrial capitalism. The emphasis in the World Social Forum
and the Global Justice Movement on global justice rejects the unequal
outcomes of the past half century of globalization imposed under national
electoral regimes and policies imposed by intergovernmental organizations
such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World
Trade Organization. If capitalism is the engine that drives democracy
towards inequality, these equalizing practices take democracy in the
direction of increased equality.
Equality in practice interrupts national and global policy discussions in
liberal circles that take place as if inequality were not a problem. Rather
than being satisfied with abstract rights, many of the sites for equality in
practice establish equality in practice to reduce particular forms of
inequality, such as landlessness or homelessness or unemployment or
neoliberal wealth inequality. Turning attention to the unequal bodily and
other violent effects of liberal democracy, they invite us to rethink relations
between democracy and its Others, demonstrating that democracy is often
deployed to make possible both individual and national violence, plutocracy
and modern forms of aristocracy, oligarchy, and even autocracy.
Equality in practice diverges from the universal principles used to claim
equality in modern liberalism, such as rights or the modern rule of law.
Rather, it marks national court systems as failures in producing equality. We
have seen this both in domestic, national legal terms in the British social
centers and in the Guatemalan highlands, the Zapatista movement and the
Karen, and transnationally in the Global Justice Movement (GJM) and the
World Social Forum (WSF ) Youth Camps. Some communities have asked
for recognition of their practices by legal officials, as we saw in the Aymara
efforts to legalize collective decision-making bodies, Pune Scrap Collectors,
MST and some U.K. social center attempts to gain land titles for squatted
land, Medico Friend Circle efforts, the Caracas mothers’ work with the
Venezuelan government, and the 15-M transition to Podemos. But we have
also seen groups strategically avoiding subjection to the law, often because
of the failure to enforce equal justice, such as the Sista II Sista Liberated
Spaces, some squatters in the U.K. social centers and MST, and the
Zapatista autonomy movement.
Democracy and equality are not the same. Participatory horizontal
practice does not always produce full social or economic equality. So,
identity-based differences remain in assemblies, as they do in electoral
democracy. Racism may be found in many of the communities and
organizations in the previous chapters. Gender inequality still characterizes
many organizations. Colonial relations may be found in many ways in all of
the social relations discussed above.
Difference is not only important for opinions and identities, political
parties and ideologies. As discussed in the Introduction, difference is also a
part of anything as it is understood through its Others, through those things
or events that are seen as opposed to it. So, difference may refer to the
Others that are inevitably produced when something is treated as if it
existed independently. Those Others remain as something like a supplement
when not acknowledged as constituting the seemingly independent thing.
We saw in Chapter 1 how the seeming independence of democracy from
autocracy, oligarchy, and even aristocracy was not as stable as it initially
seemed. So, an object or event that seems to exist independently is haunted
by the Others that make it possible or recognizable, as distinct from those
with which it is conventionally contrasted, and on which the object depends
at its founding. Equality in practice requires persistent questions about these
boundaries, interrogating them to see when they hide inequalities.
The boundary between horizontal democracy and liberal electoral
democracy is actively being renegotiated in many of the sites above. We
saw this most explicitly in the shift of 15-M from a horizontal mass
movement to a political party participating in elections. The 15-M
participants who made the transition worked to retool political party
practices to make them more accountable to “the people.” A comparable
struggle continues in the Zapatista movement, both in rural areas of the
state of Chiapas and among urban supporters, as leftist political parties
attempt to draw support away from the horizontalist autonomy movement.
Even the conservative party in Mexico, the PRI, uses cash and other lures as
well as paramilitary violence and other threats in its attempts to weaken the
Zapatista movement, doing its best to pressure the Indigenous and their
non-Indigenous supporters back into participating in electoral democratic
practices. In post-2001 Argentina, there was an explicit struggle between
those committed to political parties, mostly on the left, and the participants
in the neighborhood assemblies of 2002, as the party members attempted
and largely failed to persuade assembly participants to join their political
parties. Still, after that struggle ended, a more subtle struggle continues
between those beholden to the lure of the established party electoral system
and those willing to commit to the Other of horizontal participation over the
long term.
This difference is perhaps the most central to equality in practice in an
age where liberal democracy holds sway for many, as it is ever present in all
of us. It shows that the binary opposition of horizontal participatory
democracy and the centralized unequal practices of liberal democracy is in
play at all times, never quite as sharp a difference as I have presented it.
The other binaries used to produce this analysis are also always already less
stable than they may seem at first.
One persistent inequality found in many communities and movements
discussed above is gender inequality, driven perhaps by the general
exclusion of women from the sphere of the political in modern societies.5
We have seen many different approaches to reducing this problem. MST, La
Via Campesina, and some sectors of post-2001 Argentina adapted
representative equity practices very much like those in electoral states.
However, both MST and La Via Campesina have been more successful in
reaching gender equity in their representative practices than have electoral
states, and even approach formal gender parity. As we saw in La Via
Campesina, both men and women represent their nations and regions at the
international level, a practice not found in the WSF or the GJM. Their
Gender Position Paper outlines a broad agenda for strengthening women’s
participation in decision-making across their large organization. That
statement had as one outcome the founding in La Via Campesina of a
parallel organization, the International Women’s Assembly, which produced
an organized body to hold the organization accountable to gender equity
both in its advocacy work and in its own organizing practices. Given the
importance of broad accountability across the many forms of equality in
practice, this approach is notable for its success. However, it may not be the
most fruitful for equality in practice over the long term, since it depends on
modern individualism and gender binaries even as it resists their effects.
Yet, these three movements may come first to mind only because they
reproduce the solutions found in affirmative action and other modern equity
programs, and may be easily put into action under the terms of the liberal
state. This may be contrasted with both the largely effective Zapatista
campaign against domestic violence and the work in Sista II Sista to reduce
violence against women in their neighborhoods. Both these organizations
focused not only on policy changes (the Women’s Law, banning alcohol,
addressing backlogs of domestic violence cases) but also on providing
alternatives to established state mechanisms that have proven unable to
reduce gender-based violence. We have also seen that women’s separatist
organizations, such as Sista II Sista, practice equality. The women’s
organization Sangtin KMS, founded on an NGO model outside of Lucknow,
India, made the transition to the grassroots organization SKMS, which
involved both women and men in the movement. These organizations
address women’s issues, but in ways that produce constructions of gender
that diverge from the individualism and modern gender binaries that anchor
modern inequality.
In addressing established inequalities, these organizations risk
reproducing the practices of the surrounding society from where the
inequality often stems. For example, fighting gender inequality by
advocating for one gender against another reinforces the gender binary that
produced the inequality, thereby reproducing the issue that one is trying to
address. Rejecting one approach as colonizing and turning to approaches
outside the colonial also, ironically, reproduces the colonizer/colonized
difference that produces the problem a group may be trying to solve. By
assuming that gender inequality can be addressed only by finding ways for
all individuals to become equal, countermeasures reduce community
members to the modern individualism that characterizes European colonial
practices.
Two Indigenous communities from Chapter 2 have resolved the problem
of gender inequity without reducing community members to the modern
individualism that is typical of European societies and the other locales they
have colonized. The Aymara collectively practice a gender-balanced form
of work distribution that differentiates the community in largely binary
gender terms, rather than reducing all to discrete individuals, and then
balancing workloads across the differentiated social sectors. Some in the
Iroquois federation draw on gender difference as a strength, so that women
can act as a counter to those men who do not take the interests of the
collective as a whole as their measure for effective governance, but instead
pursue more narrow interests. In this way, a large percentage of the
community act together to guarantee that governance keeps the collective as
a whole as its overall goal.
This is an important solution for one of the central problems facing
democracy: how to guard against narrow interests that dominate under
partisan politics, oligarchy, and plutocratic nepotism. This suggests that
addressing entrenched inequalities may more effectively be carried out by
turning to terms that differ from those that produced the inequality. While
reinforcing a binary category, women and men, these two Indigenous
practices do so in a way that does not enforce the binary in modern
individualist terms.
So, how might the identity terms so central to the distribution of
entrenched modern inequalities be disrupted? Perhaps the most striking
example of the failure of identitarian thinking that is productive of equality
in practice was seen in the Karen of the Burma/Thai border, discussed in
Chapter 2. Social scientists have warned us that they carry not so much any
single identity as a portfolio of multiple cultural and linguistic identities,
which are emphasized as needed. The name given to the Karen itself has
many questions. In addition, Karen links to a single place are not stable,
since mobility was practiced in ways beyond the geographic mobility of
leaving one village to set up another. Karen communities were also skilled
at preserving their own sovereignty by at times scattering, fissioning,
disaggregating, reconstituting, and shifting subsistence routines or
languages and cultural practices. In their histories, then, it becomes unclear
exactly who the “Karen” are, since they may be changing locale,
subsistence economics and material practice, language, and culture. A very
different history brought about the Iroquois Confederacy, yet each nation in
the confederacy is enormously complex in its scattered territories in a settler
colonial context, off-reserve and on-reserve populations, binational
location, and any number of other matters that make the term “identity”
hopelessly inadequate, yet still useful for the survival of the Longhouse
democratic tradition.
Another site for collective transformation of identity was Sista II Sista’s
organizational shift from a refusal to have paid employees and foundation
funding in the late 1990s, to a period of time in the early twenty-first
century of having paid staff and pursuing foundation funding, to the
decision in 2002 to shift to grassroots fundraising. The shift of Sangtin
KMS from a government-funded NGO structure to the SKMS grassroots
form is another case of flexible, unfixed group identities. These histories
suggest a readiness to transform the collective self dramatically in the
interest of preserving autonomy and rejecting surrounding unequal
practices. These collective transformations supplement the modern
individualist agency seen in the renaming of Marcos as Galeano or personal
transformations in other organizations that are more typical of modern
liberalism.
Recognizing the unstable character of binary differences makes it
possible to ask which democracy we want to govern our affairs. Democratic
practices that center on questioning rather than on fixed, programmatic,
carefully calculated politics open democracy up to differance. The Zapatista
emphasis on democratic autonomy as “Walking while asking questions” is
only the most literal rendering of questioning seen in the previous chapters.
We have seen some successes in changing the terms of difference that
equality in practice requires. The playful naming of Brooklyn’s Sista II
Sista collective and the wildly imaginative screeds of the Zapatista
spokesperson Marcos (or Galeano) only touch the surface of the freedom at
work in equalizing practices. By renaming themselves with the vernacular
(Sista) or confounding established categories (a cat-dog, a beetle knight-
errant, a little girl soccer coach), they rewrite the rules of social relations,
demanding recognition even as they reject the violence of modern
inequalities, demand state accountability, and claim an unacceptable form
of sovereignty. What of participation by those who disrupt and displace
modern modes of intelligibility, citizenship, logic, and politics? How would
democracy as equality in practice respond to participation by the
unrecognizable and the unclean, the starving and the stumbling, those
unreasonable types known as primitive or wild, addicted and insane, or
those without fixed abodes or bodies?
Another success in rewriting the terms of difference is seen in the WSF
and its International Youth Camp. Many participants in the WSF show in
practice that they reject elite processes, and show little interest in the
centralized hierarchies that characterize many orthodox leftist movements,
whether of intellectual elites or professional activists.6 In this sense, the
WSF culture of “open space” and participatory process of organizing and
producing the forum has effectively displaced the traditional modern
practice of centralized hierarchies. Yet, both at the WSF and in People’s
Global Action from the GJM, issues raised by Indigenous communities
often did not register effectively with non-Indigenous participants, and were
instead reduced to modern left liberal terms such as “the crisis of
capitalism” or climate change issues or procedural differences. This is a
widespread problem.
When carried out effectively, assembly discussions become encounters
with the Other. As sites for the exercise of difference, they challenge what
is known and familiar with unfamiliar terms, assumptions, and logics in
many ways, sometimes explicitly and often only implicitly. Responding to
these Others when they are encountered is one of the most ethically and
politically challenging aspects of democracy with a differance. When a 15-
M assembly responds to the views of those who still believe in electoral
politics, or when Aymara collectives accept leftists comfortable with
centralized organizing, this becomes an encounter with their Others. When
a Sangtin KMS meeting finds men among its members and welcomes them,
or a WSF open space discussion recognizes Indigenous demands for
decolonizing annual planning practices as legitimate, then the presence of
Others may become transformative in equalizing collective relationships.
The headless, anarchic, vague, fungible, dissimulating simulacrum or
jellyfish known to Leach as gumlao and to the Karen as their normal social
and political practice does not only differ from the rigid hierarchies of the
modern state. It also differs significantly from other Others of the modern
European state: the anarchist communities of the seventeenth-century
Levellers, or the Paris Commune, or the Spanish anarchist trade unions of
the 1910s and 1920s. Taking difference as fundamental rather than
secondary avoids assimilating the Karen into these enemies of the modern
European state. By refusing to lump one type of difference with others, in
this case the Karen with all those that do not have the social “order,” we
begin to interrupt that object so desired by most social scientists and by
those who benefit from the unequal hierarchies of the modern state. The
contrast of the Karen with the modern state or the jellyfish form with
Spanish anarchist trade unions produces Others that haunt the analysis, the
text, keeping questions about difference active and effective politically.
Working with difference rather than erasing it by reducing it to familiar
categories and thinking is an important practice for democracy with a
differance.
The emphasis on practice runs the risk of presenting concrete events in
terms that make them seem transparent and easily understood, as in some
sort of newspaper reportage, activist account, or anthropological
observations. Each reference throughout this book to a community, a
movement, or a site suppresses multiple differences; for each reference to
hold its place as an object of analysis, this erasure of difference allows the
organization to cohere as a distinct, independent entity in language and in
history. Yet, each organization always already has difference within it. We
saw that the Aymara community is criss-crossed by complex affiliations
with colonialism, the Catholic Church, different levels of adherence to
Indigenous heritages in urban and rural population, and other differences.
We saw that 15-M took the risk as a movement in 2011 of bringing into the
organization those who were still invested in electoral politics. The
Indigenous Zapatistas took the risk of allowing a light-skinned mestizo into
their movement, and even allowed him to take leadership positions. These
differences disrupt modern assumptions about the limits of the political and
the democratic, of equality and sovereignty, by supplementing them with
the many Others of the modern electoral state.
Some of these Others seem readily recognizable and easy to reject in
modern terms as inappropriate within the narrow limits of democratic
politics as produced by the modern state. The importance of everyday
polytheisms in Indian subaltern practices or mística in the MST or the
Aymara ayllu may be readily reduced to the religious, a well-established
threat to the secular sphere of politics. The importance of dreaming in some
Indigenous practices from Chapter 2 is easy to dismiss as some form of
naïve idealism, or a failure of the hard-headed realism needed within the
limits of electoral party politics. Principles such as love and trust and the
spiritual sound to the modern government administrator like a form of
illogical thinking that prevents some from succeeding in the rational realms
of political calculations of interests, power struggles in backroom policy
negotiations, and electoral polls. Karen headless villages can be rendered
into the exotic, strange antics of the primitive, the monstrous political
formations of the subhuman in comparison to the centralized unequal
structures of normal politics. These encounters with the Other of modern
liberal democracy signal a site where inequality is at risk and a place where
the door to equality may open. This is more than a problem of strangeness,
the exotic, the foreign.
These moments trace the limits of the liberal norm, which are not
metaphors. These norms are enforced, often with considerable violence.
When the Aymara ayllu networks successfully opposed the local arm of the
Bolivian state in Cochabamba, they encountered considerable gendered
difficulties in establishing the legal status of the newly formed body known
as The Coordinator (La Coordi nadora). Specific laws were even passed in
Bolivia to compete with and to erode the recognizability and legal status of
these organizations, and to displace them with liberal, electorally based
legislative and administrative bodies in the European mold. Other
assembly-based decision-making bodies often meet with police and other
enforcement regimes that oppose them: rural MST settlements and urban
squatters in U.K. social centers, the homeless and unemployed, women who
demand that their needs are met, and Zapatista or Karen autonomous
spaces. Other liberal norms are also enforced internally in individuals and
in collective practices, as when only men are given funds to travel to
network meetings, or when assembly meetings go on for days without
agreement and make severe demands on the time frames enforced by
capitalism.
Each attempt to dismiss these Other terms and logics reinforces the
inequality of modern political practices. Reducing these singular histories
of equality in practice to an established other of the electoral state reinstalls
inequality as the norm. Pressured to accept inequality as the only
alternative, many subject themselves to the concrete apparatuses of the
electoral state. In doing so, citizens give their right to democratic
participation to those who can claim the public interest as their own:
electoral representative elites. This is how democracy comes to mean
inequality. And this is how the power of the many becomes the power of the
few.
Each of the many contrasts that have shaped the entire argument of this
book works persistently to hide these Other terms and logics, Other
approaches and frames: the few vs. the many; the elites vs. the people;
vertical vs. horizontal; electoral vs. assembly; particular or singular vs.
universal; Europe vs. non-Europe; modern logics vs. Other logics. Yet, each
of these contrasts opens questions that are not easily resolved, points out
blind spots in enforced norms and practices, or unearths multiplicities rather
than shared universals.
Without a clear binary to shape democratic politics, an opening is created
for difference. Without the closure of total unity or order, an encounter with
the Other becomes possible. This opening to difference is the ethics of
equality in practice. The strength of incompletion, of the failure of closure,
is found when asking “Which democracy?” or “Who is the we?” Rather
than assume that all people already know which democracy is best, each
historical practice comes under interrogation. Rather than submerge these
questions into an assumption, the dominance of a single norm (the English
Glorious Revolution) or opposition (democracy or autocracy? Subjection or
resistance?), this failure provokes open debate about foundations and
practices.
Asking about difference as it is obscured by each of these binary
contrasts blocks the monopoly claims of modern liberalism to universal
norms for democracy. When questions are asked about difference for each
historical practice, the monopoly claim may be displaced. Displacement
opens the door to criticism, which some would say is long overdue. The
turn away from representative systems redefines democracy as the practice
“of self-organized politics that rests on no foundation other than self-
authorization.”7 Democracy as a self-organized form allows practitioners to
reject those aspects of democracy established by the electoral state that
produce inequality, to shape their own future rather than serve the few.
Seeing democracy as self-authorized makes the people their own authority
in democracies, an authority that does not rely on representative or
specialist bureaucrats to determine what practices to pursue.
Ethics in this multiplicity is not a matter of calculating proximity to the
inequalities of the European model for the modern state posing as a
universal ideal. Ethics, instead, may take equality as a measuring stick.
Equality in embodied practice. Equality in outcomes. Equality for all across
multiple differences: not just class or gender differences, racial differences
or differences of colonizer and colonized, urban and rural differences,
differences of those with schooling and those without, and Other
differences we have not yet imagined. That is why the politics of naming
and calculation of equality are so important.

Equality with a Differance

If equality does not mean equal rights or equality under the law or equal
access to the ballot box, then how are we to know when equality becomes
“real”? Modern electoral democracy rarely asks how equality is made real,
but horizontal participation demands that all be held accountable to all.
There are many approaches to determining when equality enters the sphere
of the real from the theoretical, from the realm of abstract principles or
ideology, from the sphere of the universal, from the historical past or the
future possible, or even from the impossible.
Equality may mean simply equal participation in decisions. For equality
in practice, however, participation does always mean individual actions,
such as voting or speaking in an assembly. Many of the organizations and
communities are very complex, and include many different types of
organizations. The Iroquois and the Zapatistas are unions of multiple
different nations or language groups, as is La Via Campesina. Other global
networks, such as the WSF and the People’s Global Action, include many,
many organizations from different locations speaking different languages
with different goals and orientations. When communities and organizations
refuse to be reduced to any single fixed identity, such as “Indigenous” or
“nonprofit” or “women’s organization,” then the terms of identity and
coherence that make electoral polls and political interests possible are being
refused. This refusal comes not to mystify the “true” views of marginal
groups, but to interrupt the calculus and logics used to force them to accept
democratic inequality as the norm.
Equality in electoral democracies is actualized only in the abstract, yet
the past chapters have demonstrated many equalities understood in concrete
terms. For the urban residents of Buenos Aires after the 2001 rejection of
the modern state, like the women of the La Vega shantytown, jobs were
how equality was measured. In the WSF Youth Camps and in the
Indigenous Aymara and Guatemalan highlands, work distribution is central
to equality. For rural movements such as MST and La Via Campesina,
settlement on land, and perhaps even ownership of land, anchors their
version of equality in practice. For Indigenous communities, land has
multiple aspects that give it centrality in democratic practice.
Multiple sites in our chapters linked equality in practice in one area, such
as land, to demands for democratic control over multiple other aspects of
their lives. The Caracas Settlers’ Movement demanded control over
“education, health, employment, community,” and we have seen a similar
list of demands in post-2001 Buenos Aires. We have seen the Zapatistas and
the Argentine movements develop new models for health care and
education, which they provide to their participants equally. At times, these
practices are also provided to others in the area who do not belong to their
movement, such as when the Zapatistas provide health care to government
supporters from local villages. Not only does this disrupt the exclusionary
boundary often placed around communities that practice equality; it has
also proven to be useful for expanding their movement.
When the Caracas shantytown women demanded democratic control over
health, jobs, and education, this may have seemed comprehensible and
manageable in modern logics and measures. Yet, when Cristina demands
democratic control over “community,” this defies easy calculation. Does
community include party politicians who represent the area where the La
Vega shantytown is located and their allies who live in the shantytown, or
only those La Vega residents who joined the Settlers’ Movement? Does
community for the subaltern include only the living, but not dead ancestors
or children yet to be born? How might Cristina have engaged with these
notions of community, if her participation in the Settlers’ Movement had
not been reduced to the terms recognized by the socialist state and modern
autonomous Marxist feminism? These are questions for future discussion,
hopefully less determined by the same modern limits and logics,
hierarchies, and binaries that have produced this text.
Democratic equality in the preceding chapters is not limited to economic
equality or equal rights, two central measures for equality under capitalism
and the modern state. Those who practice subsistence or swidden
agriculture, such as the Zapatistas, the Karen, and many in the MST, do not
regard jobs in a capitalist or socialist economy as central, since their rural
farming and gathering are sufficient to meet many needs. Calculation and
measurement are important in modern society, yet equality with a differance
is not always easy to calculate. Encountering difference as a significant
obstacle to assumed universal meanings for “equality” and “democracy”
invites us to draw on specific practices Other to the modern logics and
assumptions that produce and enforce modern inequality.
When Indigenous communities turn to land as a central element in
democratic accountability, the manner in which equality might be achieved
remains unclear for some in a setting where many settlers are present on
Indigenous lands. The modern state is fully prepared to calculate the value
of land as individual property, and could conceivably draw on comparable
calculations when considering lands as subject to treaties after those treaties
are violated with impunity. Yet, when the Longhouse Iroquois refer to land
as a sacred force or the MST speak of the land as their mother, the terms of
calculation under modern secular liberalism fail. At these moments, the
commodification and sale of land as private property encounters its Others,
and land is transformed from an object into a being that requires love and a
cultivation of relationships. When Buenos Aires neighbors or MST
members or the Zapatistas talk about dignity, trust, mística, and love as
important to their democratic practice, modern calculation becomes even
less possible. How does anybody quantify a measure for when “something
moves toward making a human being more humane,” in the view of
Clarice, an MST participant? When Gorete from MST rejects modern
individualism to affirm “the realization that I want land, food, and life for
others, not just for me,” then liberal logic fails. When the Okanaga
delegates bring the water and the land and future generations into their
council process, democracy is transformed into new terms. Under different
assumptions, the very terms by which value is understood are no longer
anchored to the universalist claims of liberal democracy as it is linked to
capitalism and property ownership. Engaging with difference as it dislodges
the universal status of specific regimes of meaning and practice is how the
incalculable is always already being put into practice.
At a more narrowly political level, democratic equality might mean the
resurgence of governance practices long threatened with extinction by the
colonizer to equality with the modern state, as it does for some Indigenous
communities. Or it might mean the broadening of equality to encompass the
land and the water, or the ancestors long gone or future generations, as it
does for others. It might mean a way to intervene in places where your
peers have been blocked from participating, as it does for subaltern
members of Medico Friend Circle and for the peasant smallholder members
of La Via Campesina in global food policy negotiations. It might mean
more dignity and less fear. Or it might simply mean a pathway to global
justice.
These notions of equality require new logics and methods of calculation.
Each of these terms is an entry point into equality with a difference: they
are modes of equality that refuse the reduction of difference to modern
political calculus, which so consistently and mysteriously seems to produce
inequality. Once difference interrupts liberal European notions of the real
and modern calculations of equality, it opens modern assumptions about the
“real” world to their Others, to Other ontologies.8
Peasants from the Andean highlands who see the political in terms of
fertility and as a place “where the imponderables have weight” or others
who bring the ancestors or dreams or the spiritual knowledge of the ayllu or
the sacred into democratic practice challenge modern notions of the
political, the empirical, and the secular real. Democracy in these
communities and organizations cannot be reconciled with the theories,
epistemes, and ontologies of modern Europe and their global heirs without
doing violence to it, without colonizing it through a reduction into modern
liberal logics and assumptions. This is no modern pluralism to be reconciled
by the liberal electoral state. Here, difference interrupts European models
for knowing and being, for knowledge and existence, for politics and self-
governance. This invites us to consider the importance of the unknown, the
incalculable, and the Other in practicing equality with a differance.
The calculation of the outcomes and impacts of participatory democracy
is central to determining whether the equality of formal equal participation
results in an equality in social, economic, and decolonial relations. Yet, this
evidence shows that there are many ways to measure the value of equality
in practice. Multiplying these frames for measuring equality reminds us that
any single measure, such as voting rights, is insufficient to determine
universal equality, or national equality, or other large claims. Any single
measure, such as the equality of incomes or private property and other
economic values central to capitalism, is insufficient. Calculating equal
rights and the economic wealth so central to capitalism can never begin to
account for equality of dignity, or safety, or health, or work distribution, or
love, or dreams, or fertility, or the ancestors, or the sacred. When
communities and organizations want equality in these areas, as we have
seen in the preceding chapters, they can produce it for themselves through
horizontal democratic practices.
Multiple modes of equality refuse the closure of political practice into the
entrenched inequalities of the modern electoral state. These encounters with
the incalculable Other make ethics possible, an ethics that practices
responsiveness to the Others shaped by the specific ways in which
communities give themselves coherence. Ethics as the persistent practice of
responsibility to the Other becomes a form of politics, an ethico-politics.9
This mode of political practice finds freedom in the entry into the unknown,
the incalculable: sites of the failure of modern mechanisms enforcing norms
and attempting to determine behavior and value. Such freedom is also
found in practices where the modern has failed to colonize all practice and
meaning. As in some Indigenous and subaltern equality in practice, we have
seen failures of local norms and “traditions” and the transformative
practices that are their outcomes. These are sites where practice produces
equality with a differance.
So, equality in practice is no celebration of multiplicity for its own sake.
This is not relativism and it is not pluralism. Differance is irreconcilable,
inconsolable, incommensurable, epistemological, ontological, and ethical.
Equality in practice refuses through difference any colonization by modern
liberalism and cannot be reconciled under the false unity of modern
nationalisms. Equality in practice becomes a “way of constituting and thus
distributing power.”10 Democracy with a differance requires a certain risk
that comes from “a desire for political freedom, a longing to share in power
rather than be protected from its excesses, to generate futures together
rather than navigate or survive them.”11 In other words, democracy entails
taking the risk of “democratizing power,” not simply producing and
distributing goods or votes or rights or meanings or abstract freedoms.12 The
ethico-politics of distributing power equally requires an encounter with
Other modes of equality beyond modern liberal modes of calculation. It
requires an encounter with the incalculable, with the unknown, with the
imponderable, with equality with a differance.

Postscript for the Future: Democracy to Come

Despite all the evidence gathered here, there will still be those who say that
equality is impossible. Impossibility invites ethical responses by asking us
to consider that which differs from established practices, as something
Other to the imaginary limits put in place by already existing theory and
practice. In the end, if equality is impossible, it may still provoke a constant
questioning, a sustained interruption from a source outside the main system
of political meaning,13 outside of democratic practice defined as a system of
entrenched, programmatic inequalities: equality not as utopia but as an-
Other horizon, always already present at the center of democracy, asking us
to imagine our practice differently, and to put what we imagine into
practice.
There are many reasons to sacrifice equality. One of the major
accomplishments of the liberal nation state since its founding has been the
disruption and dismemberment of the social bonds formed through
participatory collective action. These chapters document how some sites
retain equality as central in their political work, in their daily lives, and in
other social relations despite this violent history.
Collective governance of one’s own affairs is democratic. By exploring
possible ways to govern lives collectively, communities and organizations
are producing equality in our present and in our futures. Recognizing them
as democracies may bring to mind not the electoral state but those who
govern their own affairs by participating directly, keeping the general
interest at the forefront, with multiple safeguards and questions to ward off
narrow interests, and realizing equality in social relations.
In the end, equality means participating in shaping one’s own life and
directly holding accountable those who might represent one’s views to
others without the mediation of elites. Democracy is founded when people
believe they can make their own reality, and indeed, that is all that ever
makes reality.14 This belief allows the communities discussed above to
produce social relations that diverge from the unequal relations around
them, including those enforced by the modern liberal state, most certainly,
but also other institutions, structures, and agents producing inequality.
Democracy, then, is some sort of sovereignty over one’s reality: one’s own
past experiences and present affairs, as well as collectively imagined
possibilities for the future that are being made real.
There are many more modes of equality in practice in the present and still
to come. Many more frames for democracy. Many more beyond the limits
of our imaginations. So much more to democracy. So much more.

Notes
1 Jacques Derrida, Rogues: Two Essays on Reason (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005),
40–1.
2 Peggy Kamuf, “Deconstruction and Feminism,” in Feminist Interpretations of Jacques Derrida,
ed. Nancy Holland (University Park: Pennsylvania University Press, 1997), 115–17.
3 James Tully, “The Unfreedom of the Moderns in Comparison to Their Ideals of Constitutional
Democracy,” The Modern Law Review 65, no. 2 (2002): 208, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1468-
2230.00375.
4 Rodrigo Nunes, “Nothing Is What Democracy Looks Like: Openness, Horizontality, and the
Movement of Movements,” in Shut Them Down! The G8, Gleneagles 2005 and the Movement
of Movements, ed. D. Harvie, K. Milburn, B. Trott, and D. Watts (Brooklyn: Autonomedia,
2005), 310–17.
5 Alexander Thomson, Deconstruction and Democracy: Derrida’s Politics of Friend ship
(London: Continuum, 2005), 20–2.
6 Janet M. Conway, Edges of Global Justice: The World Social Forum and Its “Others” (New
York: Routledge, 2013), 63.
7 Stathis Gourgouris, “Democracy Is a Tragic Regime,” PMLA 129, no. 4 (2014): 809–18, doi:
10.1632/pmla.2014.129.4.809 809.
8 Elizabeth Povinelli, Empire of Love: Toward a Theory of Intimacy, Genealogy, and Carnality
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 172–3, 182.
9 Michel Foucault, “On the Genealogy of Ethics,” in The Foucault Reader, vol. 3, ed. Paul
Rabinow (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 343; Jacques Derrida, “Limited Inc. a b c …” in
Limited, Inc., trans. Samuel Weber (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1988), 97;
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Death of a Discipline (New York: Columbia University Press,
2003), 14, 30, 101–2, 66–9; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Responsibility – 1992: Testing
Theory in the Plains,” in Other Asias (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008), 58–66, 71–4,
89–91; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Subaltern Talk: Interview with the Editors,” in The Spivak
Reader, ed. Donna Landry and Gerald Maclean (New York: Routledge, 1996), 293; Stephen
Morton, Gayatri Spivak. Key Contemporary Thinkers (Malden, MA: Polity, 2007), 57, 66–9;
Thomas Keenan, Fables of Responsibility: Aberrations and Predicaments in Ethics and Politics
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 2–5, 29–32, 70–2, 193 n2.
10 Wendy Brown, States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1995), 5.
11 Ibid., 4.
12 Ibid., 5.
13 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the
Vanishing Present (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 430; Morton, Spivak, 49–53,
122, 149–50.
14 Elizabeth Povinelli, Economies of Abandonment: Social Belonging and Endurance in Late
Liberalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 8–11.

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Appendix 1

Countermeasures against Inequality

Among the many sites for enforcing accountability to participants, some

groups use only one or two mechanisms, while many organizations draw on
multiple mechanisms both formally and informally. Which sites does your
community use? Are they effective in ensuring equal participation by all?
What other countermeasures might your community use to reduce
inequality? Are there other countermeasures that you imagine would lead to
increased equality?
Participants in different sites for equality in practice have developed
many countermeasures to inequality. Drawing on their local histories and
specific experiences with those who attack equality, they have devised
many strategies and tactics to retain power for all. Below is an incomplete
sampling of these countermeasures from some of the communities and
organizations treated in this book; in addition to this incomplete sampling,
many more countermeasures are possible.
Please see Appendix 2, Resources for equality in practice, for additional
ideas for countermeasures against inequality. These countermeasures may
be useful for long-term interventions that interrupt established unequal
practices that are always already present in specific sites.
1 Community formation:
a balance coherence of community produced each time decision is
taken with persistent questions about Others to the community
(Zapatistas);
b train community members to recognize the nonhuman entities and
forces important to the community so as to develop practices
whereby nonhuman contributions may become part of the
 assembly discussions, e.g., the land, the water, the air, ancestors,
future generations, spirits, the sacred (Iroquois; MST; WSF;
IYC);
c balance stability and endurance of organization with readiness to
transform collective self (Karen; Sangtin KMS; Sista II Sista);
d actively cultivate love, trust, dignity and other values not
supported by modern electoral democracy or consumer culture
and European objectivity (MST; Argentina).
2 Transforming fixed identities:
a collective group may strengthen their relationship to equality by
decentralizing their organizational structure (Sangtin KMS;
Zapatistas);
b collective group may strengthen their equal distribution of
resources by reducing their interactions with wage-market
dependency and capitalist organizations (S2S; MST);
c training for transforming individual practices that dominate
discussions by men, settlers and other colonizers, the wealthy or
middle-class, or members of other groups accustomed to not
listening to their Others (U.K. social centers);
d individuals also transform their social relations and even their
own naming, as seen in the transformation of Subcomandante
Marcos into Subcomandante Galeano to honor a movement
participant killed by paramilitary forces, and the various naming
practices seen in horizontal organizing in the U.K. social centers,
the World Social Forum International Youth Camp, and the
Global Justice Movement (GJM).
3 Decision-making practices:
a use assemblies, councils, or other direct participatory practices to
make community decisions (all);
a if the assembly practices are combined with other, less
accountable practices, continue to use assembly meetings for
producing major organizational policies, rather than drafting
policies in small groups, and making other significant decisions
(S2S; FEJUVE);
 a training in large assembly facilitation skills (GJM; U.K. Social
Centers; Occupy).
4 Responding to differences in assembly participants:
a give attention to differences in wealth, literacy and education,
internet access, public speaking experience, gender, strength of
relation to Indigenous heritage, and other divisions among
individual community members, and address those differences in
the way the assembly operates to equalize relations (GJM; U.K.
Social Centers; Occupy);
b broaden participants to include both fully accepted members of
the community and their Others, as did Indigenous activists who
welcomed the mestizo Marcos to help found the movement, and
as 15-M participants did when they objected to unequal policies
of electoral representatives but allowed supporters of electoral
government to join assembly discussions (15-M; Zapatistas);
c broaden participants to include both human and nonhuman
participants, such as nonhuman animals, plants, important rivers,
sacred mountains, and other entities (Okanaga; Maori);
d training in flexibility about relations with the Others of those
active in assembly discussions; this flexibility produces a strong
sense of the instability of the limits of the “we” that shape the
assembly, as when the Zapatistas passed the Women’s Law and
when the WSF began to open itself to Indigenous concerns.
5 Assembly participant duties:
a rotation of duties and responsibilities on an annual or semiannual
basis reduces power relations coming to center on individuals and
their allies (Zapatistas; GJM);
b train consistent participants in multiple duties, so that leadership
responsibilities fall on all shoulders, not on those of the few
(Zapatistas);
c train assembly facilitators in nonviolent conflict management and
resolution (Zapatistas; GJM; U.K. Social Centers; Occupy).
6 Equality in assembly discussions:
a consensus as a countermeasure to inequities in participation (all);
 practice good communication: consistently circulating notes
b about meeting decisions to all; distributing information frequently
to all participants; ensuring equal access to needed resources
(GJM);
c allow speakers who have not spoken previously to speak ahead of
others (U.K. Social Centers; GJM);
d respond seriously to modes of equality that are incalculable or
based in the unknown or “the imponderable” (Caracas Settlers’
Movement; MST; Andean highlands);
e train specific families to speak to represent precisely those who
do not always speak up as much as members of other groups,
such as children rather than adults, or young women rather than
elders or fathers, or those who heal rather than injure and kill
(Okanaga).
7 Proposal development and veto:
a stronger accountability to all is produced through participation by
all in the writing and revision of position or policy proposals
(MST local assemblies);
b writing and revision of proposals on minor issues may be
delegated to small subgroups, as long as membership in these
subgroups is rotated regularly and frequently to avoid the
emergence of elite governance (Zapatista JBG);
c veto power for proposals should be widely distributed, and not
centralized in single individuals or small groups; see consensus
practices below.
8 Equal participation watchdog bodies:
a Iroquois divide gender roles to hold powerful groups, elected
representatives, and elites accountable to all members of the
community; some in the Iroquois federation draw on gender
difference as a strength, so that women can act as a counter to
those men who do not take the interests of the collective as a
whole as their measure for effective governance, but instead
pursue more narrow interests;
b Commission for Democratic Guarantees with elected members or
members chosen by consensus (Podemos).
 9 Ethics:
a ethical training in relations with a community’s Others
(Zapatistas);
b ethical training in relations across differences (S2S; U.K. Social
Centers; Guatemalan Highlanders);
c ethical training in nonidentity modes of difference (Zapatistas);
d training in the refusal of any definitive “we” that does not allow
ethical responses to historical change and collective efforts to
redefine the limits of the community (15-M; Zapatistas).
10 Ensuring accountability to all:
a tribunals to reject, remove, or modify proposals and policies that
do not serve all equally;
b mechanisms for changing practices to remove loopholes exploited
for inequality (S2S; Sangtin KMS; Zapatistas).
11 Training for the long term:
a education in the history of antidemocratic tendencies in
democracies;
b literacy education (MST);
c education in the histories of antiegalitarian centralized practices,
such as the state, plutocracy, and corporations;
d education in the histories of colonialism and anticolonial
resistance (Zapatistas; Iroquois; Okanaga; Aymara; Guatemalan
Highlanders);
e Indigenous language and cultural education for the next seven
generations (Zapatistas; Iroquois schools);
f education in the complex history of the relation between freedom
and equality.
12 Holding representatives accountable:
a to ensure that representatives remain accountable to their
assembly, Argentinian organizations send two “listeners” to
accompany any representative who speaks or negotiates on the
group’s behalf; after the representative speaks on their behalf, the
group of three return to the assembly, where the listeners report
 back on what was said or negotiated while the representative
remains silent (Argentina);
b training young women or members of other marginalized groups
for assembly leadership by having them listen carefully to
assembly discussions and report back to other assemblies about
decisions (Zapatistas);
c representative recall mechanisms by consensus or supermajority
vote.
13 Representative selection mechanisms:
a training in listening skills (Argentina neighborhood councils);
b selection by consensus to ensure that the representative will serve
the general interest and not narrow agendas (Zapatistas).
14 Finances:
a budgetary decisions: participatory budgeting;
b transparency: the Podemos party also publishes all of its
economic activities online in real time, generating a very large,
detailed accounting of its income and expenditures and also
generating many attempts to hold the party accountable for its
budget decisions from a wide range of the public;
c watchdog oversight: Zapatista vigilance committee with members
chosen by assembly consensus.
15 Interaction with centralized hierarchical structures (state, corporations,
INGOs, IGOs):
a reduce interactions with centralized organizations to minimum
level possible for community well-being (Guatemalan
Highlanders; U.K. Social Centers; Zapatistas; IYC);
b interact with state and corporations or INGOs only when
necessary to meet organizational goals; avoid other interactions
(Andean Highlanders; WSF; La Via Campesina);
c negotiate with state for recognition of practices and/or existence
(Aymara; Karen; Iroquois; Pune Scrap Collectors; OFPFVII);
d make demands on the state to produce equal social relations (S2S;
Medico Friend Circle; 15-M; MST; Settlers’ Movement;
Zapatistas; Participatory Budget Projects);
 become part of the state apparatus but modify practices in an
e attempt to ensure some equality in practice (Podemos).
Appendix 2

Resources for Equality in Practice

Two types of resources for practicing equality are found below. First are
guides to convening an assembly meeting and guides to consensus
practices, with materials that may be used for training assembly participants
and facilitators for equality in practice. The other resources are useful for
beginning to get to know or contacting organizations and communities that
are putting equality into practice in the present and getting to know
influential organizations that have practiced equality in past decades.

Assembly and Consensus Meeting Practices (Alphabetical

Order by Author)
Coover, V., E. Deacon, C. Esser, and C. Moore. Resource Manual for a Living
Revolution. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers, 1981.
Sections on Working in Groups, Training and Education, and Practical Skills cover consensus
practices, conflict management, and running a meeting in approachable language.
Fisher, Simon, Dekha Ibrahim Abdi, Jawed Ludin, Richard Smith, Sue Williams, and Steven
Williams. Working with Conflict. London: Zed Books, 2000.
Useful guide to making sense of conflict that addresses power, cultural differences, and gender
issues using helpful graphics and charts with clear explanations.
Freeman, Jo. “Principles of Democratic Structuring.”
http://freeskoolsproject.wikispaces.com/Democratic+Structuring.
Brief guide to seven principles to make sure that group structures will be decentralized and
responsible to the whole group rather than to any single subgroup.
Gastil, J. Democracy in Small Groups—Participation, Decision Making, and Communication.
Philadelphia: New Society, 1993.
Book sections cover consensus and how to run a meeting using consensus; discusses practices
useful for small group democracy and how democratic decisions are made in accessible terms.
Moyers, Bill. “Overcoming Oppression.” www.november.org/BottomsUp/reading/masculine.html.
Guide to changing individual behaviors so all can participate fully in group meetings.
Network for Climate Action, “Groups and Meetings.” 2009–11.
www.networkforclimateaction.org.uk/toolkit/group_working.html. A comprehensive collection of
resources for assembly and consensus meetings, including “Doing It without Leaders,” how to
strengthen active participation and meeting accessibility, short and long guides to consensus
practices, quick consensus making for pressure situations, short and long guides to facilitating
decentralized meetings, group agreements, and responding to difficult behaviors in meetings.
Rabble.ca, “Consensus to Decision Making.” http://rabble.ca/toolkit/guide/consensus-decision-
making.
This readable brief guide includes sections on what consensus is, how to facilitate a meeting, and
differences between facilitating small and large groups, with links to further resources.
Schutt, Randy. “Notes on Consensus Decision Making.” 2001. www.vernalproject.org.
Comprehensive overview of consensus, with extensive concrete examples, tips for good process,
tips for how to interrupt poor process, reasons to use consensus, different types of consensus
decisions, skills to learn, specific roles and techniques, responses to common criticisms of
consensus, and the history of consensus, with further resources.
Seeds for Change. “Consensus Decision Making.” 2010. http://seedsforchange.org.uk/consensus.
(Also available as a paperback book.)
Extensive guide to consensus, including what consensus is and is not, conditions when consensus
may be useful, stages to the consensus decision process, guidelines for how to reach consensus,
tips for consensus decisions when time is very limited, how to reach consensus in large groups,
and troubleshooting tips.
Spain Report, The. “This Is What Happens in a Podemos Citizens’ Circle.” June 12, 2014.
www.thespainreport.com/articles/381-140612100000-this-is-what-happens-in-a-podemos-
citizens-circle. Brief description of the collective decision-making structure used by the Podemos
political party.
Starhawk. Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising. Philadelphia: New Society Publishers,
2002.
Beginners’ guide to democratic organizing and building a diverse movement, with helpful
sections on equalizing power dynamics, feminist approaches, and consensus.
Toma La Plaza. “Guide to Popular Assembly Dynamics” (Spanish).
http://madrid.tomalaplaza.net/2011/05/31/guia-rapida-para-la-dinamizacion-deasambleas-
populares/.
Detailed guide to moderating popular assembly meetings developed from experience in assemblies in
Madrid, Spain from May 15 to May 31, 2011.
Ward, C. Anarchy in Action. London: Freedom Press, 1988.
Guide to anarchist organizing, with an overview of how different groups come to consensus.

Equality in Practice: Organizations and Communities

(Ordered Alphabetically by Region)

These resources introduce further information about major communities

and organizations practicing equality. Resources are available online, in
print, and in digital formats.

Asia
Chipko: The Chipko Movement was formally created in the 1970s in Northern India by local peoples
opposing the damaging effects of commercial timber harvesting on their rural livelihood. The
group credits much of its success to the women of the local economy. Shiva, Vandana, and J.
Bandyopadhyay. “The Evolution, Structure, and Impact of the Chipko Movement.” Mountain
Research and Development 6, no. 2 (1986): 133–42; Sudesha. Directed by Deepa Dhanraj. Faust
Films, 1983.
Kagad Kach Patra Kashtakari Panchayat (KKPKP): A trade union of waste pickers and itinerant
scrap buyers founded in 1993 and based in Pune, India. As of 2014 it had around 10,000
members, both women and men. KKPKP also has a voice in many local social issues.
www.kkpkp-pune.org/ (English); http://wiego.org/wiego/kagad-kach-patra-kashtakari-panchayat-
kkpkp (English).
Karen of Burma: An ethnic group living in Burma and also Thailand and China. Around seven
million Karen live in Burma. The Karen are known for resistance against the Burmese military
dictatorship and fighting for an independent Karen state, although since 2013 activity has slowed.
http://khrg.org/; http://karennews.org/reports-on-karen/; Kuroiwa, Yoko and Maykel Verkuyten.
“Narratives and the Constitution of a Common Identity: The Karen in Burma.” Identities: Global
Studies in Culture and Power 15, no. 4 (2008): 391–412.
Medico Friend Circle (MFC): A nationwide group of individuals interested in the health problems of
the people of India. Since its inception in 1974, MFC has critically analyzed the existing health-
care system and has tried to increase available health care to the poor. www.mfcindia.org/.
SEWA (Self-Employed Women’s Association): A trade union registered in 1972 in India, SEWA is
an organization of poor, self-employed women workers. Their goal is to organize women workers
for full employment, whereby workers obtain work security, income security, food security, and
social security (at least health care, child care, and shelter). They promote full employment and
self-reliance. www.sewa.org/index.asp; Datta, Rekha. “From development to empowerment: the
self-employed women’s association in India.” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and
Society 16, no. 3 (2003): 351–68; “Self-Employed Women’s Association.”
https://vimeo.com/10036652.
SKMS (Sangtin Kisan Mazdoor Sangathan (Sangtin Peasants and Workers Organization)): Beginning
in India in 1998 as an NGO for rural women’s development, SKMS campaigns for civil rights and
true representation of the rural poor throughout India. SKMS is comprised of predominantly dalit
men and women and is currently over 3,000 members strong. https://sangtin.org/ (Hindi).

Central and South America

Andean highlands: Indigenous peoples of multiple language and cultural groups practice self-
determination politically, economically, and culturally. Kusch, Rodolfo. Indigenous and Popular
Thinking in América. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010.
Articulación Feminista Marcosur (AFM): A feminist collective that defines itself as both a school of
thought and a movement of feminist political action for social transformation. Founded in 2000,
AFM works with women and organizations in Latin America and the Caribbean.
www.mujeresdelsur-afm.org.uy/ (Spanish); AFM videos, www.youtube.com/playlist?
list=PLPwictVdVEF7fWMPWMO6TQVumvo7FRzDO.
Colectivo Feminista Cotidiano Mujer (Daily Women’s Feminist Collective) (CFCM ): A feminist
collective created in 1985 and active in Uruguay and other areas of Latin America. They focus on
the political and cultural agenda of women in these regions, as well as issues of human rights,
economy, pleasure, and the environment. www.cotidianomujer.org.uy/sitio/ (Spanish);
www.youtube.com/user/CotidianoMujerUy (Spanish).
GAC Street Artists Group (Grupo de Arte Callejero), Argentina: Developed in 1997 in Buenos Aires,
GAC uses street art and public exhibition as a form of political protest and dialogue. Working
closely with HIJOS, it primarily deals with civil rights issues and the injustice of the Argentinian
dictatorship. http://criticalspatialpractice.blogspot.com/2006/09/grupo-de-arte-callejero.html;
Wright, Stephen. “Behind Police Lines: Art Visible and Invisible.” Art & Research: A Journal of
Ideas, Contexts and Methods 2, no. 1 (2008): 1–9; “Grupo de Arte Callejero (G.A.C.) en “Cómo
Acabar con el Mal.” https://vimeo.com/59489557.
Guatemalan highlands: Indigenous communities that retain their Indigenous governance practices.
Tzul Tzul, Gladys. “Sistemas de gobierno comunal indígenas: La organización de la reproducción
de la vida.” El Aplante 1, no. 1 (2015): 127–40.
HIJOS (Hijos por la Identidad y la Justicia contra el Olvido y el Silencio), Argentina: Similar to the
Mothers of the Disappeared, HIJOS is an organization founded in 1995 to represent the people
who were “disappeared” as a result of the Argentinian military dictatorship. Their main form of
protest has been the escrache, a public protest in front of the residence of a person who they
believe has violated human rights. www.hijos-capital.org.ar/ (Spanish); Druliolle, Vincent.
“HIJOS and the Spectacular Denunciation of Impunity: the Struggle for Memory, Truth, and
Justice and the (Re-) Construction of Democracy in Argentina.” Journal of Human Rights 12, no.
2 (2013): 259–76; “Hijos.” www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1olHHtUBlU.
MST (Landless Workers Movement), Brazil: A mass social movement, formed by rural workers to
fight injustice within land reform in Brazil. MST became a national movement in 1984, and has
led over 2,500 land occupations that have resulted in new land for around 370,000 families.
MSTBrazil.org (Portuguese); www.mstbrazil.org/ (English); Branford, Sue and Jan Rocha.
Cutting the Wire: The Story of the Landless Movement in Brazil. London: Latin American Bureau,
2002; Wright, Angus and Wendy Wolford. To Inherit the Earth: The Landless Movement and the
Struggle for a New Brazil. Oakland, CA: Food First Books, 2003; Soil, Struggle and Justice:
Agroecology in the Brazilian Landless Movement. Directed by Andreas Hernandez, 2014.
MTD Solano, Argentina: unemployed workers’ organization. Began in the 1990s when a group of
neighbors banded together to fight corruption in the local government and the Catholic Church. It
is still involved in many democracy efforts today.
www.rebelion.org/hemeroteca/argentina/solano191102.htm (Spanish); Sitrin, Marina.
Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2006.
Settlers’ Movement, Caracas, Venezuela: Single mothers and others from the La Vega slums of
Caracas organized to obtain housing and other resources from the Hugo Chávez government;
Motta, Sara. “We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: The Feminization of Resistance in
Venezuela.” Latin American Perspectives 40, no. 4 (July, 2013): 35–54. doi:
10.1177/0094582X13485706.

Europe
15-M, Spain: Also known as los indignados or “the outraged”. A nationwide movement in Spain that
began on May 15, 2011 as people gathered to protest the two-party electoral system. This
movement led to the creation of many other social movements and civil rights groups. Alcaide,
Soledad. “Movimiento 15-M: Los ciudadanos exigen reconstruir la política.” El País. May 17
2011. http://politica.elpais.com/politica/2011/05/16/actualidad/1305578500_751064.html; Flesher
Fominaya, Cristina. “Debunking Spontaneity: Spain’s 15-M/Indignados as Autonomous
Movement.” Social Movement Studies 14, no. 22 (2015): 142–63. doi:
10.1080/14742837.2014.945075; “Spanish Revolution: 15-M, 2011–12” (French, with English
subtitles). www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjqdD_Fzolo.
Italian Social Centers: Sites for cultural, social, and economic interaction cobbled together by young
people using abandoned buildings and other devastation resulting from austerity policies. Mudu,
Pierpaolo. “Resisting and Challenging Neoliberalism: The Development of Italian Social
Centers.” Antipode 36, no. 5 (2004): 917–41. doi: 10.1111/j.1467–8330.2004.00461.x.
U.K. Social Centers: Sites for cultural, social, and economic interaction cobbled together by young
people using abandoned buildings and other devastation resulting from austerity policies.
Hodkinson, Stuart and Paul Chatterton. “Autonomy in the City? Reflections on the UK Social
Centres Movement.” City: Analysis of Urban Trends, Culture, Theory, Policy, Action 10, no. 3
(2006): 305–10. doi: 10.1080/13604810600982222.

Global
GJM (Global Justice Movement): A network of organizations addressing the inequalities of
globalization or global economic financialization. Della Porta, Donatella, Massimiliano Andretta,
Angel Calle, Helene Combes, Nina Eggert, Marco Giugni, Jennifer Hadden, Manuel Jimenez, and
Raffaele Marchetti. Global Justice Movement: Cross-national and Transnational Perspectives.
New York: Routledge, 2015; Fominaya, Cristina Flesher. “Creating Cohesion from Diversity: The
Challenge of Collective Identity Formation in the Global Justice Movement.” Sociological
Inquiry 80.3 (2010): 377–404.
PGA (People’s Global Action): A worldwide coordination of radical social movements, grassroots
campaigns, and direct actions in resistance to corporate globalization and for social and
environmental justice. Juris, Jeffrey. Networking Futures: The Movements against Corporate
Globalization. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008; Maiba, Hermann. “Grassroots
Transnational Social Movement Activism: The Case of Peoples’ Global Action.” Sociological
Focus 38, no. 1 (2005): 41–63.
Slum Dwellers International: A network of community-based organizations of the urban poor in 32
countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. It was formed in 1996, focusing on local-level
political engagement and organization. Satterthwaite, David. “From Professionally Driven to
People-Driven Poverty Reduction; Reflections on the Role of Shack/Slum Dwellers
International.” Environment and Urbanization 13, no. 2 (2001): 135–8; Shack/Slum Dwellers
International. www.youtube.com/channel/UCWep-Tdyb05KNddxUvndzfg.
La Via Campesina: Founded in 1993 by a group of farmers, this international movement defends
small-scale, sustainable agriculture to promote social justice. La Via Campesina is comprised of
organizations from 73 countries and represents about 200 million farmers.
https://viacampesina.org/ (English, French, Spanish); Desmarais, Annette Aurélie. La Vía
Campesina: Globalization and the Power of the Peasants. Ann Arbor: Pluto Press, 2007.
WSF (World Social Forum): An annual gathering of grassroots organizations and peoples, WSF
began in Brazil in 2001. Its overall goal is for a global community to come together to find
solutions to the problems of our time. https://fsm2016.org/en/ (French, English, Spanish, Arabic);
Conway, Janet M. Edges of Global Justice: The World Social Forum and Its “Others.” New York:
Routledge, 2013; Smith, Jackie, Ellen Reese, Scott Byrd, and Elizabeth Smyth, ed. Handbook on
World Social Forum Activism. New York: Routledge, 2015.

North America
Haudenosaunee Longhouse (Iroquois Confederacy): Federation of six Indigenous nations who
practice Longhouse democracy. Onondaga website: www.onondaganation.org/; Barreiro, José, ed.
 Thinking in Indian: A John Mohawk Reader. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Books, 2010; Simpson,
Audra. Mohawk Interruptus. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014; Alfred, Gerald Taiaiake.
Wasáse: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom. Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2009.
Occupy Movement: Social movement against inequality and the lack of democracy, experimenting
with new forms of democracy. Byrne, Janet, ed. The Occupy Handbook. Boston: Back Bay
Books, 2012; Khatib, Kate, Margaret Killjoy, and Mike McGuire. We Are Many: Reflections on
Movement Strategy from Occupy to Liberation. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2012.
Okanaga: An Indigenous nation in North America, the Okanaga practice democracy following their
heritage practices. Okanagan Nation Alliance: www.syilx.org/; “Enowkin: What It Means.”
www.ecoliteracy.org/article/enowkin-what-it-means-sustainable-community
Organización Frente Popular Francisco Villa de Izquierda Independiente (OFPFVII): Urban
organization of poor workers and unemployed who have successfully claimed unused land in
Mexico City for housing, education, and other purposes. https://ofpfviiblog.wordpress.com/
(Spanish).
Sista II Sista (S2S), United States: This advocate for working-class women’s rights and freedom from
violence began in 1996 in Brooklyn. Its goal is to promote the holistic development of young
women of color, and it is comprised of primarily Black and Latina women. Sista II Sista. “Sistas
Makin’ Moves: Collective Leadership for Personal Transformation and Social Justice.” In Incite!
Women of Color against Violence, ed. Color of Violence: The Incite! Anthology, 196–207.
Boston: South End Press, 2006; Sista-2-Sista Youth Summit (2012). https://vimeo.com/40699039.
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) – Emerging from the Civil Rights Movement,
SNCC was created in 1960 to give young black students a way to claim equality for themselves.
Carson, Clayborne. In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1981; Polletta, Francesca. Freedom Is an Endless Meeting. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2002; Zinn, Howard. SNCC: The New Abolitionists. Boston: South
End Press, 1964.
Zapatistas: A political group based in Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico. Comprised of rural
Indigenous people, the Zapatistas have been publicly active since 1994, negotiating for a peace
agreement after their brief uprising and establishing their autonomous regions and “Councils of
Good Government” in 2003. Enlace Zapatista: http://enlacezapatista.ezln (Spanish, French,
German, Italian, English, Russian); Marcos, Subcomandante Insurgente. Our Word Is Our
Weapon: Selected Writings, edited by Juana Ponce de Leon. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2001;
Zapatista. Big Noise Films (Spanish with English subtitles). www.youtube.com/watch?
v=vBqIowBEL60; The Zapatista Uprising: 20 Years Later. 2014 (Spanish with English subtitles).
www.vice.com/video/the-zapatista-uprising-20-years-later.
Index

15-M (May 15 movement, Spain) 24, 163, 169–73, 177–8, 181n52, 211–13, 250–1, 256; electoral
politics and 237, 248; inequality and 171, 216; impact on state 228; transition to political party
171–3, 229; see also Iglesias, Pablo; indignados; Podemos

abstractions see idealism; universalism

accountability xi, 3, 10, 14, 24–6, 28n10, 51–2, 55–6, 59, 66, 105–6, 109–11, 129, 137, 139–40, 160,
167–8, 172, 175, 188, 196–7, 216, 230–1, 234–6, 249–50; to all 24, 51, 64, 92, 226, 249–50;
citizen 24, 28n10; collective 172; community 59, 175, 231; democratic 59, 63, 188, 241; enforcing
247; global 197; openness and 66; representative 59, 160, 196; state 24, 129, 236; social violence
as a mode of 216; see also antidemocratic; difference; equality; ethics; power
acephalous 97, 98, 237–8; see also catachresis; gumlao; Karen
agency 38n124, 101, 126, 138, 143, 209, 218; collective 28n11, 38n124, 161, 228; crisis and 140;
Indigenous 86; individualist 236; women’s 142–3, 145–6; see also calculations; determinism;
ethics; failure; freedom; imponderables; impossible; incalculable
American Revolution 11, 14, 35n87, 59, 230
anarchism 97, 166, 178, 190, 197, 214–15, 219; see also anarchist communities; social centers;
squatter communities; squatter movements; squatting
anarchist communities 62, 98, 237
ancestors 65, 100, 103, 161, 174, 226, 241–2, 247
Andean highlands 15, 89, 242, 249, 255
Andean plateau 89–91, 228
antiausterity movements 24, 28n11; see also neoliberalism
antidemocratic 14, 49, 50–3, 66, 250; see also binaries; Others
appropriation x, 5–6, 10, 12, 19, 23, 25, 30n23, 58, 64, 98, 101, 126–7, 129, 143, 165, 195, 207–8,
227, 230–1; democracy and 15–16, 19, 54, 111, 135, 227; ideological 126; of the Indigenous
112n1, 112n2, 148, 197; World Social Forum and 195, 214; see also catachresis; deconstruction;
democracy; essentialism; universalism; violence
Arab Spring 28n11, 162, 170
Argentina 16, 24, 58, 86, 160, 163, 177–8, 191, 233; anarchist traditions in 166; autonomy in 164;
consensus building in 167–8; December 2011 crisis 165; horizontalism in 165, 167, 169, 234;
Indigenous communities in 15, 50, 89; military dictatorship in 166; neighborhood assemblies in
166–7; neighborhood associations in 211–12, 230; unemployed unions in 165; workers’ councils
in 62, 212; see also Grupo de Arte Callejero (GAC); Hijos por la Identidad y la Justicia contra el
Olvido y el Silencio (HIJOS)
aristocracy 9, 13, 35n88, 49, 65–6, 199, 232–3
Aristotle 4, 8, 13–14, 49, 55, 65, 232
Articulación Feminista Marcosur (AFM) 216–17, 255
Asia Labour Exchange 138
Asia Monitor Resource Centre (AMRC) 138
Asociación Nacional de Desempleados (ADESOR, National Association of the Unemployed) 170
assemblies 4, 10–11, 17, 19, 21–2, 28n11, 147, 163, 165–6, 177, 187, 196, 213, 215, 217–19, 230,
238, 240, 247–51, 253–4; 15-M and 169–72, 237; ancient Athenian 13, 54, 69n40; in Argentina
167–9, 233; Aymara 90–3; in Chiapas 103–4; consensus and 87, 191, 228; the Coordinator (la
Coordinadora) 92–3, 238; democratic 51; difference and 233; enemy infiltration of 161; equality
and 111–12, 178; horizontal 25; Indigenous 85, 213; KKPKP 138; Landless Workers Movement
132; Longhouse and 98, 100; OFPFVII 135; Other of 237; participatory 58, 167, 227, 229; popular
23, 50, 61, 66; social movements and 61; Zapatista 105–7, 109, 231
Athens 13, 16, 49, 232; see also Solonian Constitution
authoritarianism 38n119, 52, 160, 162, 164, 215, 231
autocracy 12, 23, 48, 65–6, 89, 199, 231–3, 239
autonomism 96, 112, 192, 194–5, 209, 214–15
autonomy 19, 20, 25, 26, 61–2, 86, 91–2, 103, 105, 107–8, 112n3, 127–8, 130, 145–6, 147, 148, 163–
5, 167–8, 175–7, 236; of allyu structures 91; assemblies and 217; democracy and 162–5; of elected
officials 8–9; gender and 218; practices of 170; as self-determination 164; women and 165;
Zapatista movement and 105, 112, 128, 164, 233, 236; see also counterpublics; decentralization;
equality; failure; modernity; state
ayllu 89, 90–3, 110, 112, 212, 228, 238, 242; see also Aymara; Katarist Liberation Movement;
Guaman Puma de Ayala, Félipe; Quechua; Tiwanaku Manifesto
Aymara 23, 87, 89–92, 99, 111–12, 237, 240, 250–1; Bolivian state and 89; communal decision-
making and 90, 233; equality and 110–11; gender and 235; as Others 89; water wars and 91; see
also allyu; misnaming
Awadhi language 125, 139

beloved community 61, 211

binaries 10, 24, 26, 30n23, 32n35, 108–9, 216, 231, 234–6, 239, 241
body politic 50; Other of the nation as 161
Bolivia 15, 89–91, 93, 164, 191, 228, 238
Brazil 15, 24, 131–2, 134, 147, 193–5, 198, 212–14, 228, 256–7; landless movement in 61 (see also
Landless Workers Movement); rural labor in 130–1; see also La Via Campesina
Butler, Judith 28n11, 220n6

calculations viii, ix, x, 5, 11, 17, 19–20, 23–4, 32n35, 32n38, 50, 65, 101, 129, 134, 135, 146, 148,
197–9, 226–7, 236, 238–9, 240–3, 249; see also appropriation; determinism; impossible ;
incalculable; universal; unknown
Canada 15; First Nations reserves 86; Mohawk nation and 99, 102, 213
Canudos settlement 130, 147, 232
capitalism 37n111, 85, 87, 101, 128, 145, 150n16, 164–5, 167, 191, 194–5, 199, 215–16, 219, 226,
242; crisis of 237; democracy and 7, 56, 124, 129, 141–2, 219, 232, 241; development and 140;
equality and 241; globalization and 62, 149n2; Indigenous communities and 111; labor and 142;
liberalism and 25, 238; nation and 178; Others of 49, 51, 147–8, 161; Podemos and 172; social
mobility and 20, 138, 146; state and 98; subaltern communities and 20, 24, 126; see also
democracy; modernity; private property; universalism
caste 3, 38n124, 137, 139; see also dalit
Castoriadis, Cornelius 62
catachresis 3, 12–16, 36n96, 39n125, 91, 92–3, 98, 134–5, 151n34; see also ancestors; appropriation;
ayllu; colonization; deconstruction; democracy; dream; fertility; growth; gumlao; imponderables;
Karen; land; misnaming; mística; Other; sacred; spiritual; trust; universalism; unknown; violence
centralization 91, 93–4, 96–7, 129, 132, 164, 168, 177, 194–6, 198, 208, 229–31, 237–8, 250–1;
democracy and 6, 8, 55, 234; leftist 170, 196, 229, 236; NGOs and 57, 147–8, 190; Other of 168;
of power 4, 8, 56, 60, 88; state 24, 27n1, 60, 88, 142–4, 146, 190, 218–19, 228; see also
decentalization; democracy; inequality; modernity; practices that weaken; power
Chávez, Hugo 142–4, 256
Chiapas 102–4, 106, 212, 233, 258; see also Lacandón jungle; Zapatista movement
Chickasaw 53, 98
China 50, 86, 124, 142, 144, 164, 166
Chipko Movement 136, 254
citizenship 9, 17, 21, 30n24, 39n139, 51, 57, 91, 127, 132, 147–8, 151n24, 211, 219, 226, 236; allyu
and 92; exclusion from 165; Karen and 95
civil rights 9, 57, 255–6
civil society 11, 24, 57, 60, 71n78, 128, 141; see also democracy; public sphere; subaltern
class 3, 13, 37n106, 38n124, 50, 90, 104, 109, 129, 137, 179n1, 197; difference 88, 112n1, 125, 146,
149n1, 178, 192, 199, 216, 239; discrimination 139; divisions 219; inequalities 193; subaltern and
149n2
Cochabamba 91, 93, 191, 238
coercion 20–1, 38n123, 52, 92, 126, 192, 207; collective 20–1; see also colonization; freedom;
liberalism; modernity; state; violence
collaboration 24, 104, 125, 140–1, 177, 179, 190, 192, 209, 216, 218
collective action 98, 137, 162, 173, 182n73, 243; see also agency; autonomy; democracy
colonization 12–13, 16, 21, 23, 38n12, 39n125, 58, 87, 104, 117n94, 149n1, 187, 243; internal
114n16; see also decolonization; globalization; imperialism; modernity; settler colonies
common good 21–2, 59, 160–1, 179n1
commons 85, 112–13n3, 127, 129, 191, 199, 215; see also autonomy
consensus 4, 7, 22, 25–6, 64, 85, 168, 173–4, 187, 201n35, 219, 226, 228–30, 249–54; Argentine
assemblies and 166–7; autonomy and 165, 170; Aymara neighborhood councils and 92; in Chiapas
104; critics of 38n123; difference and 49, 211; disagreement and 62; Global Justice Movement and
190–1, 196; Indigenous practices of 87–8, 100, 102; La Via Campesina and 192–3; social centers
and 215–16; World Social Forum and 194–5, 198, 214; see also assembly; democracy; equality
constitutionalism 21
Contestado Wars 130, 147
Cornell, Drucilla 30n23, 68n22, 149n1
councils 4, 10, 13, 17, 28n11, 58, 248; Indigenous 61, 228; Mohawk band 100–2, 111–12, 213; MST
132–3; neighborhood 15, 60, 92, 231, 251; Okanagan 241; Settler’s Movement (Venezuela) 145;
workers’ 62, 166–7, 230; Zapatista 107; see also juntas de buen gobierno
Council of 500 15, 54, 230
counterfactuals 39n139; see also counterrealities; real, the
counterpublics 188; see also autonomy; democracy; political theory; universalism
counterrealities 135; see also counterfactuals; real, the
cultural nationalism 108, 111

dalit 137, 139–40, 255

decentralization 4–5, 24, 60–2, 93, 97, 135, 140, 147, 166, 170, 190, 194, 196, 198, 209, 214, 248,
252–3; Global Justice Movement and 190, 196, 198; of power relations 60, 96; místicas and 135;
World Social Forum and 194, 214; see also assembly; centralization; deconstruction; democracy;
equality; power
decolonization xi, 38n125, 61, 63, 117n94, 237, 242; see also colonization
deconstruction see binaries; democracy, deconstruction; Derrida; differance; Other; supplement
Deleuze, Gilles 29n23, 38n119, 63; see also event
democracy 3, 21–2, 38–9n125, 58; anarchist 60, 62; assembly see assembly; associative 60; Athenian
3, 13–14, 49, 54, 65, 69n40, 109, 230, 232; autonomy and 162; bourgeois 15, 56; capitalist 56,
141–2; centralized see centralized; claims to 9, 16, 26, 95, 107; constitutional 11, 57; cosmopolitan
57; as deceit 54; deep 10, 63, 145, 216; deliberative 38n123, 57, 59, 141; deconstruction and 63,
74n131; difference and 6, 16–19, 21–2, 49, 66, 109–11, 128, 135, 147, 176–7, 179; direct 58–60,
62, 144, 165, 207; dissent in 49; dream of 66–7; egalitarian 22, 60, 63, 195; electoral see
representative; elitism and 8, 49, 54–5, 98; enemies of 4, 9, 23, 48, 53, 98, 161, 210, 237;
European concept of 3, 6, 12, 14–16, 21, 49, 55–6, 61, 93, 99, 107, 112, 134–5; freedom and 21,
27, 53, 217, 227, 243; global spread of 5, 12, 31n28; Greek concept of 3–4, 6, 15–16, 58, 107, 110,
135, 232; horizontal 176, 182n76, 233, 242; hybrid 54, 213; liberal 21, 23, 25, 35n73, 56–7, 63,
98, 111, 150n22, 199, 226–7, 232, 234, 238, 241; middle classes and 8, 17, 49, 124, 130, 161; as
multiple 66, 109, 189, 227; Others of 48–52, 63–6, 124, 232; participatory 35n86, 58–61, 89, 106,
136, 140–1, 146, 162, 173, 177, 181n42, 189, 211, 228–9, 234, 242; practices that weaken i, 4–5,
13, 17, 24, 28n10, 28n13, 35n73, 50–1, 56–7, 58, 109, 187–8, 208, 226–7, 230; procedural 56; as
process 6, 11, 22, 60, 62, 66; radical 62–3, 180n18; real of 22, 66, 129–30, 227; representative 10,
12, 22, 50, 55–6, 59, 61, 64, 85, 99, 109, 141, 160, 165, 213; as “rule by all” 3, 8, 12, 49, 54; social
56; the state and 26–7, 54, 58–60, 92, 102, 106, 111, 141, 168, 177, 215, 217; struggles for 16–17,
48, 79; vigilance and 11, 21, 52, 63; see also accountability; agency; antidemocratic;
appropriation; aristocracy; assembly; catachresis; consensus; countermeasures; counterpublics;
democracy with a difference; democratic governance; democratic practice; democratic theory;
differance, democracy with; en’owkinwiwx; equality; equality in practice, countermeasures for;
ethics; liberalism; participatory democracy; political theory; popular democracy; real, the;
subaltern; universalism
democracy with a differance ix, 22, 25, 129, 147, 197, 198, 226, 232–9; see also accountability;
agency; autonomy; equality with a differance; Others
democratic governance 3, 17, 36n101, 58, 65, 66, 91, 106, 141
democratic practice 4, 6–13, 15–18, 20–2, 24–5, 35n74, 38n119, 50, 53, 55, 62, 64, 66–7, 142, 162,
168–9, 178, 189, 194, 198, 209, 219, 229, 232, 236, 241–3; assembly see assembly; capitalist 129;
as critique 8, 11, 16, 22, 31n28, 57, 63, 66–7, 128, 141, 178, 199, 200n12, 227, 233, 239;
deconstructive 63; egalitarian 4–5, 49, 54, 57, 85, 96, 98, 102, 128, 136, 177, 194; electoral 3, 6, 9,
10, 11, 21, 32–3n38, 38n119, 107, 148, 177, 233; gender and 101; Haudenosaunee 99; horizontal
176, 242; Indigenous 85–6, 90, 109, 148; land and 240; limits of 39n137; Other 58; participatory
10–11, 15, 59; popular 49, 60, 160–2, 167, 175, 176, 180n18; prefigurative 10, 61; subaltern 125,
127, 130, 137, 141, 146; Zapatista 105–7, 128; see also assembly; consensus; democracy;
democratic theory; equality in practice; political theory; popular movements; singular; universal
democratic theory 17, 48, 63, 150n22
demos 3, 49, 66, 163, 176, 226
Derrida, Jacques x, xi, 29n19, 29n20, 29n23, 32n35, 34n58, 35n74, 36n96, 37n104, 37n108, 39n127,
39n137, 63, 74n131, 220n6; Spivak’s critique of 30–1n27; supplement and 37n104; trace and
36n96; see also deconstruction; difference; event; Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty; supplement
determinism 5–6, 37n139, 133, 161, 162, 164, 168, 175, 177, 195, 210, 216, 218, 220n4, 229, 230–1,
239, 241–3; see also agency; autonomy; calculation; ethics; failure; freedom; impossible;
incalculable; indeterminacy; impossible; singular; universal
dictators 4, 12, 48, 90, 160
dictatorship 130–1, 160, 162, 166, 189–90, 217, 254–5
differance ix, 236, 243; democracy with a 22, 25, 129, 147, 197–8, 226, 237, 243; equality with a 22,
25, 227, 229, 241–3; feminism with a 217; subaltern 148; see also agency; autonomy; calculation;
 democracy with a difference; Derrida, Jacques; equality with a difference; ethics; failure; freedom;
impossible; incalculable; Others; Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty; subaltern; supplement
difference 6, 9–11, 16–20, 21–5, 29n19, 31n28, 64–6, 146, 148, 162, 168, 172–3, 177–8, 189–95,
207–11, 216–17, 226–8, 233, 236–9, 241–3, 248–50; as antagonism 37n106; awareness of 177–8;
class 112n1, 125, 149n1, 216; colonizer/colonized 235; democracy and 6, 16–19, 21–2, 49, 66,
109–11, 128, 135, 147, 176–7, 179; ethics and 63; feminine 68n22; gender 37n106, 49, 88, 110,
177–8, 192–4, 213, 235, 239, 249; Huadenosaunee 102; identity-based 233; Indigenous
communities and 68, 88–9; openness to 29n20, 161; Other and 38n121, 197; political 35n73;
radical 98; social 96, 100, 111, 128, 177; the singular and 30n23; subaltern 128–30; Zapatista
movement and 108; see also coercion; differance, failure, modernity; Other; universal
domestic labor 140, 142, 144
domestic violence 106, 175, 177, 213, 234; see also gender; violence
dream xi, 5, 10, 25, 66–7, 135, 141, 148, 238, 242; see also catachresis; democracy, dream of;
political, dream and; political theory
Dworkin, Ronald 28n14, 31n28

economics 4, 9, 28n13, 126; capitalist 62; market 127, 175; smallholder 198; subsistence 235; see
also capitalism; commons; economic; equality
egalitarian practices 5–6, 21, 23–4, 49, 54, 57, 63, 141, 177; 15-M and 170; in Argentina 24, 167–8;
Global Justice Movement and 178; in Guatemala 217, 219; Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) 98, 100–1;
Indigenous 85, 87; Karen 87, 94, 96; limits of 24, 26; popular democracy and 161; Settlers’
Movement and 144–5; subaltern 128, 130, 136, 139, 142; World Social Forum and 194; Zapatista
102–3
egalitarianism 22, 56, 61, 63–4, 97–8, 230; in ancient Athens 13; democracy and 9, 12–13, 49;
failures of 53; feminism and 173; power and 88; social democracy and 56
Egypt 16, 162, 189
ejidos 103–5; see also Union of Ejido Unions
El Alto Federation of Neighborhood Councils (FEJUVE) 92, 230, 248
elections 5, 8, 12, 14, 51, 65, 131, 171–3, 177; democracy and 25, 51, 54, 56, 66, 136, 169; Global
Justice Movement and 191, 196; in Lacandón communities 104; Mohawk band council 213;
neighborhood 178; participatory democracy and 59, 160; Podemos and 230–1, 233; self-
management and 166–8; subaltern communities and 24; workers’ councils and 167–8, 230
electoral practices 3, 24, 26, 54, 136, 188, 213, 226; democracy and 21, 59; inequality of 172;
workers’ councils and 167; see also elections; electoral state; voting
electoral state 3–4, 6, 16, 18, 21, 50, 65, 93, 111, 129, 165, 177, 198, 217, 219, 228, 234, 238–9, 243;
democracy and 227; Landless Workers Movement (MST) and 134; liberal 142, 242; modern 4, 10,
21, 23, 25, 49, 52, 55, 58, 109, 112, 146, 169, 172, 190, 196; private property regimes and 199,
232; resistance to 216; Sangtin Writers and 142; settler colonial 232; socialist 146
elites 14, 19, 49–50, 54–5, 60, 66, 109, 146, 149n1, 161, 226, 239, 244; accountability and 249;
aristocratic 48; economic 126; intellectual 195, 236; political 3, 9, 13, 57, 143, 162; representative
109, 238; social 13, 56, 141, 162, 172
elitism 98; democracy and 49, 55; voting and 8, 54–5
empire 14; see also imperialism
England 6, 13, 142, 212, 215
English Revolutions 13, 239
Enlightenment 11, 27, 31n28, 38n124, 57, 62, 127, 130, 135, 148, 151n24, 151n32, 211, 221n13
en’owkinwiwx 15, 86
equality 31n28, 32n31, 32n35; as problem 6; as promise 7; as rights 4, 7, 9, 11, 21, 39n139, 54, 56–7,
62, 74n131, 93, 101, 103, 109–10, 114n12, 128–9, 132, 138, 139, 140, 142, 143, 147, 148, 151n24,
160, 192, 199, 211, 216, 218, 219, 226, 232, 239, 242–4, 255, 256, 258; economic 7; of outcomes
 3–4, 7, 28n14; opportunity 7, 28n14; participation 3, 7; under the law 9; see also democracy, as
critique; equality with a differance; equality in practice; inequality; universalism
equality in practice 4, 7–8, 10, 19–20, 25–6, 54, 100, 162, 168, 178–9, 189, 197, 211, 213–14, 219,
226, 228–35, 244, 247, 251–2; assembly-based 93; autonomy and 164; compromises and 230–1;
countermeasures for 14, 25, 35n73, 67, 107, 141, 168, 190, 192, 196, 213, 227, 229–30, 231, 235,
247–51; daily impact of 207; decision making 5; democracy as 6, 236; democratic practice and 18,
199; difference and 172, 190, 234, 236, 239, 243; economic 7; elections and 54; electoral state and
238; freedom and unpredictability in 210; gender and 110, 171; Global Justice Movement 191;
hybrid 230–1; Indigenous 197, 243; Iroquois and 99; La Via Campesina and 192, 198; large scale
187; love and trust in 169, 181n49; Others and 23; participatory democracy and 211, 240; “the
people” and 163, 173; relational outcomes of 181n49; subaltern 146–7, 197, 243; value of 242;
World Social Forum and 194; Zapatista movement and 102, 228; see also assembly; consensus;
democracy; gumlao; vigilance
equality with a difference 22, 25, 227, 229, 239–43; see also accountability; differance; democracy
with a difference; Others
equalizing practices 23, 25, 102, 106, 11, 166, 207–9, 217–18, 232, 236
essentialism 12, 68n22, 75n140, 97, 108, 117n94, 155n155, 218; see also modernity; universalism
Esther, Comandanta 107, 128; see also Zapatista movement
ethico-politics x, 242, 243; see also agency; ethics; failure; political theory
ethics ix–xi, 6, 18–19, 20, 25, 37n104, 37n108, 52, 134, 148, 209, 220n4, 221n13, 242–3, 250; of
equality in practice 239; Others and 63, 66, 242; see also accountability; agency; Derrida, Jacques;
determinism; ethico-politics; event; failure; Foucault, Michel; freedom; impossible; incalculable;
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty; universals
Europe viii, ix–x, xi, 3–4, 6, 8, 11–12, 14–15, 18, 19, 21–2, 26–7, 29n23, 31n28, 38n125, 48, 49, 50,
53, 54–5, 61, 68, 70n52, 71n74, 75n140; see also colonialism; imperialism; liberalism
Eurocentrism 16, 24, 30n23, 58, 75n140, 101, 129, 151n32; World Social Forum and 195; see also
appropriation; differance; political theory; state; universalism
event 29n20, 35n74, 62, 127, 209; Others and 18, 22, 86, 233; see also appropriation; Deleuze;
Derrida; ethics; political theory
everyday life 4–5, 9, 25, 35n73, 144–5, 207–9, 213, 216; allyu practices and 91, 93; democratic
practice and 60, 63–4, 143, 219; democratization of 214; equality and 210–11, 215, 219; freedom
and 210; land and 101, 214; polytheism and 221n13, 238

failure 5–6, 20–1, 53, 55, 63–4, 124, 126, 137, 169, 198, 208, 216, 235, 238–9, 243; of accountability
55, 188, 196; of closure 239; difference and 6; of democracy 21, 64, 124, 226; of endurance 208,
220n5; of equality 4, 53, 63, 136, 147, 164, 177–8, 232–3; failures of egalitarianism 4, 53, 147,
164, 177, 178, 193, 197, 232; of gender equity 193; Global Justice Movement and 197–8; of
identitarian thinking 235; Podemos and 172; of representation 137; of subjection 5, 208, 216,
220n5, 226, 233, 238, 243; of unions 169; see also agency; autonomy, determinism; ethics;
freedom; incalculable; power; universals
Fanon, Frantz 210
farmers 20, 91, 105, 138–9, 148; organizations 191–2; resistance 197; smallholder 125, 130, 132,
193, 198–9; subsistence 3, 125, 134, 142, 161; tenant 125, 132; wealthy 140, 193; see also La Via
Campesina
farming 126, 191, 241; equality through 232; family 199; industrial 125, 198–9, 217, 232; land and
134; subsistence 102, 105, 126, 218; see also farmers; Landless Workers Movement; subsistence
agriculture; swidden (slash and burn) agriculture; Via Campesina, La
Federación Regional de Asociaciones de Vecinos de Madrid (FRAVM) 170
Federalists 8, 71n75
feminism xi, 24, 28n11, 36n96, 37n103, 68n22, 75n140, 93, 101, 110, 126, 142–6, 171, 173–6,
182n73, 182n76, 215, 216–18, 241, 253, 255; autonomous Marxist 145–6, 148, 241; coercion and
126; with a differance 217; embodiment theory and 82n11; in Guatemala 216–18; liberal 101;
second-wave 182n73; socialist 142; Spivak on 75n140; see also appropriation; differance;
difference; gender; universal
fertility 15, 242; see also catachresis; growth; incalculable; land
financialization 125–6, 189–90, 217, 257; see also globalization
force relations 28n16, 32n35, 99–100, 207
Forces of National Liberation (FLN) 104–5
Foucault, Michel x, 28n11, 28n16, 29n20, 30n24, 31n28, 32n35, 35n73, 36n96, 37n108, 38n124,
70n52, 220n3, 220n4, 220n6, 221n12; see also agency; failure; freedom; governmentality; power
France 6, 12–13, 53, 195, 215
Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) 190, 198
freedom 31n28, 38n124, 53, 210, 218–19; autocratic 65; collective 19; community 19; democracy
and 221n12, 227; democratic 27, 217; difference and 23, 197; equality and 63, 208, 210, 236, 250;
failure and 5, 216; the incalculable and 243; instability and 37n108; liberal 21; limited 220n4;
postmodern 37n108; from violence 258; see also agency; appropriation; coercion; failure;
incalculable; impossible; liberalism; modernity; power; universalism
Freire, Paolo 128, 137, 222n55
French Revolution 8, 11, 13, 59, 230

General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 192

gender 27n106, 38n124, 38n125, 90, 125–6, 137–9, 143–4, 146, 175–8, 197, 218–19, 238, 248, 252;
15-M and 171; consciousness 138; construction of 139, 234; democratic practice and 25;
difference 37n106, 49, 88, 110, 177–8, 192–3, 213, 235, 239, 249–50; division of labor and 217–
18, 221n13, 235, 240; divisions 101, 104; equality 10, 96, 133, 145, 193, 211–13, 217–8; equity
101, 193, 217, 234; identities 17; inequality 13, 39n125, 96, 110, 142, 167, 171, 193, 216, 233–5;
land management and 217–18; Landless Workers Movement and 133, 193; leadership and 101;
maternal mortality 199; “the people” and 163; relations 108, 163, 207; roles 101, 249; social
relations and 24, 129; subaltern populations and 125–6, 144; transgender 10; violence 175, 234;
women 3, 13, 16, 20, 53, 92, 100–1, 104–6, 108, 110, 112, 124, 125, 127, 130–1, 133, 136–7, 138–
40, 142–6, 148, 164–5, 168, 173–5, 177, 182n76, 192–3, 197, 212–13, 216–18, 229, 231, 234,
235, 238, 240, 249, 250, 254–5, 258; see also binaries; domestic violence; Esther, Comandanta;
feminism; subaltern; universal
general will 24–5, 85, 194
Global Justice Movement (GJM) 25, 62, 170, 189–91, 214, 216, 219, 230, 232, 248, 257
global North 125, 161, 189–91, 193
global South 7, 20, 56, 58, 60, 189–92; family farms in 199; elites in 149n1; movements in 175, 197;
resistance in 189, 197; subalterns and 124; women of 124, 175; World Social Forum and 194
globalization 23–5, 62, 126, 147, 149, 187–91, 194, 199, 216, 228, 232; as democratization 9, 12,
188; inequalities of 257; see also financialization
governance 11, 24, 48, 51, 66, 167, 188, 212–13, 219, 231, 235, 241; accountability and 161;
aristocratic 13; assembly-based 132; Aymara practices and 90–1; collective 18, 243; colonial 111;
of the commons 112–13n3; democratic 3, 17, 36n101, 58, 60, 65–6, 91, 106, 141; egalitarian 23–4,
60–1, 86, 93, 103, 133, 136, 211; electoral 90, 124; elitist forms 49; European modes of 15;
globalized 24; horizontal 165, 214–5; Indigenous 61, 87, 102, 104, 112, 164; Longhouse 100–1;
MST 132; Okanagan 110; participatory 60–1, 90; representative 56, 91; self- 6, 15, 21, 24–5, 58,
93, 96, 129–30, 133, 161, 164–5, 211–12, 217, 227, 242; shared 212; state 168 traditional 130;
transnational 24, 188; Zapatista 231; see also assembly; democracy; globalization; inequality;
political theory; state; universal
government organized nongovernmental organization (GONGO) 148
governmentality 30n24, 210; see also Foucault, Michel
Gramsci, Antonio 125, 149n1
growth 15; see also appropriation; catachresis; fertility; incalculable; land, imponderables
Grupo de Arte Callejero/Street Artists Group (GAC) 166, 255
Guaman Puma de Ayala, Félipe 90
Guatemala 25, 219; feminism in 216–18; land reform in 103
Guattari, Felix 38n119, 63
gumlao 96–8, 115n52, 237; see also acephalous; appropriation; catachresis; incalculable; Karen
Habermas, Jürgen 57, 182n73, 220n3
Hardt, Michael 63, 149n2
Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy 23, 98–102, 258; democratic practice in 99; Longhouse 98,
111, 213–14, 228, 236, 241; women and 231
Hayek, Friedrich A. 4, 36n101, 56, 65
health care i, 7, 136, 140–1, 144–5, 166, 167, 168, 194, 198, 212, 219, 240, 242, 254
heritage: culture 199, 232; European democratic 99; Indigenous 88, 111, 214, 217–18, 237, 248;
intellectual 19, 63, 197; liberal 126; practices 85, 87, 136, 207, 258; social center 215; Spanish
colonial 90
hierarchies 10, 32n35, 93–4, 96, 98, 138–9, 146, 164, 195–6, 208, 210, 215–16, 218, 227–8, 236–7,
241; gender 144; social 8, 17, 19, 48, 60
Hijos por la Identidad y la Justicia contra el Olvido y el Silencio (HIJOS) 166, 255
historical specificity see singular
homelessness see inequality; land; Landless Workers Movement; squatter communities; squatters
horizontalism 61; see also assembly; decentralization; democracy
horizontality 29n20, 62, 190
human rights 9, 13, 21, 57, 147, 160, 199, 211, 255–6; see also civil rights; equality, as rights;
liberalism; modernity
humor see irony; parody; play
idealism 4–5, 53, 30n24, 36n100, 39n139; see also ethics; failure; freedom; incalculable; singular;
universalism
identity 10–11, 17, 35n74, 108, 110, 117n94, 165, 178, 187, 195, 235–6, 240; claims 208; position
without 155n155; refusal of 270; “woman” and 146; see also agency; differance; difference;
freedom; gender, idealism; political theory; universalism
Iglesias, Pablo 171–2; see also 15-M; Podemos
illiteracy 3, 20, 124–5, 137–8, 149n1, 149n5, 229; see also literacy; subaltern
imperialism 21, 90, 101
imponderables 15, 242–3, 246, 249; see also catachresis
impossible, the i, viii, ix, 4–5, 6, 7, 13, 49, 51, 56, 95, 96, 109, 127, 145, 146, 195, 208–9, 227–8,
240, 243; see also agency; appropriation; calculation; catachresis; determinacy; differance;
freedom; incalculable
incalculable, the 19–20, 23, 65, 134, 241–3; see also agency; calculation; catachresis; differance;
failure; freedom; impossible; universalism
indeterminacy 31n27, 216; see also agency; determinism; failure
Indigenous 87–8, 113n12; see also specific indigenous communities
Indigenous communities 18, 23, 50, 86, 88–9, 93, 97, 99–100, 111, 136, 211; autonomy and 60, 164;
democracy and sovereignty in 15; democratic practices in 23, 85, 96, 98; gender equity in 217;
governance practices of 61, 109, 113n3, 164, 241; in Guatemala 103, 217–18; horizontalism in
174, 214; land and 240–1; North American 98; Other social practices 50; shared land practices in
85; South American 195; subaltern communities and 112n1; total population 86; tradition and 88,
 108, 117n94; voting and 38n119; World Social Forum and 195, 235; see also specific indigenous
communities
Indigenous democracy 86, 101, 109, 111
indignados 24, 169, 181n52, 256; see also 15-M; Podemos
individual 5–6, 9–11, 15, 21, 29n19, 29n20, 30n23, 38n124, 49, 51, 55, 88, 100, 102, 168, 176–7,
189–90, 192, 207, 209–11, 220n4, 220n7, 229, 238, 249
individualism 31n28, 36n101, 60, 85, 101, 110–11, 145, 173, 176, 197, 218, 234–6, 241
inequality viii–ix, 4–6, 7–8, 9, 10, 13–14, 19, 22, 28n14, 32n35, 35n87, 52, 54, 62, 64, 66, 104, 110,
124–6, 129, 133, 142, 188–90, 191, 208, 210, 213, 244, 247; see also aristocracy; binaries;
calculation; centralization; equality; gender; health care; homelessness; land; modernity; norm;
power; violence; wealth
Intercontinental Youth Camp (IYC, World Social Forum) 214–15, 247, 251
intergovernmental organization (IGO) 24, 28n10, 113n12, 187–8, 191–2, 232, 251
International Coordinating Commission (ICC, La Via Campesina) 193, 197
International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP) 192–3
International Labour Organization (ILO) 113n12
International Monetary Fund (IMF) 125–6, 187–9, 198, 212; see also financialization
international nongovernmental organization (INGO) 24, 26, 149n2, 191–2, 195, 231, 251
International Women’s Assembly 193, 197, 234
irony 11, 49, 50, 235; see also parody; play
Iroquois see Haudenosaunee
juntas de buen gobierno (JBG, Zapatista good governance councils) 107, 109, 164, 231, 249
Kachin 96, 97; see also catachresis; gumlao; Karen
Kagad Kach Patra Kasthakari Panchayat/ Scrap Collectors Union (KKPKP) 136–9, 141, 147, 212,
229, 233, 251, 254; see also dalit
Kant, Immanuel 4, 49, 55
Karen 23, 93–4; conflict with Burma (Myanmar) 93; egalitarian practices of 93; epistemic politics
and 115n60; gender inequalities and 96; literacy and 95; social structures of 96–7; swidden
agriculture and 94; Thailand and 94–5; see also catachresis; gumlao; Kachin
Katarist Liberation Movement 91, 228; see also ayllu
k’ax k’ol (K’iche’ shared labor system) 217–18, 240; see also gender, labor division and
Khanawake 99, 101, 213
K’iche’ 218–19, 233
La Vega (Caracas shantytown) 143, 240, 256
labor 131, 142–3; collective 127; cooperative 174, 214; distribution of i, 240; division of 215,
221n13; exploitation of 12; informal 144; migrant 102; organized 62; shared 211–12, 217; unfree
88; women’s 139; see also allyu ; capitalism, labor and; domestic labor; gender, division of labor
and; k’ax k’ol
Lacandón jungle 103–5
Laclau, Ernesto 62, 179n8, 179n12
ladinos 102, 117; see also oligarchy
land 100–1, 110–11, 125, 193, 212, 214, 217–18, 226, 240–1, 247; allyu and 9; community
ownership of 129; displacement from 87, 192; management 102–3, 217; meaning of 199, 214;
occupation of 61, 103, 168, 256; policies 191; reform 103, 132, 256; relationship to 134–5, 148,
207, 218; shared 85; subaltern communities and 136, 143–5; titles 217, 233; see also capitalism;
catachresis; ejido ; en’owkinwiwx ; everyday life; gender; Indigenous communities; Landless
Workers Movement
Landless Workers Movement (MST, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra) 130–5, 175,
191, 196, 199, 211–13, 228–30, 233–4, 238, 240–1, 247–51, 256; democratic practices of 132–3,
135, 141, 147; gender and 133, 193, 197; literacy and 133, 250; relationship to land and 134, 148,
241; see also mística
language 209; see also Awadhi; catachresis; Derrida, Jacques; norms
Lefort, Claude 63
Lenca 102
Levellers 98, 237
liberal humanism 55, 86, 101, 127
liberalism 11, 23, 25, 31n28, 35n73, 55, 128, 178, 197, 226, 232, 236, 239, 241, 243; European 53,
58, 70n52, 111; limits of 48
liberation theology 135, 144
literacy 95, 125, 133, 149n5; see also illiteracy; subaltern
Liu, Lydia 31n27, 36n96
Locke, John 4, 49, 218
logic see reason
love 62, 135, 169, 176; see also catachresis
Lyons, Oren 100, 112
Madison, James 4, 8, 35n88, 494, 55
Marcos/Galeano, Subcomandante 107, 108–9, 111, 236, 248; see also Zapatista movement
mass movements 16, 24, 38n124, 161–3, 165, 178, 233; see also popular movements
Medico Friend Circle (MFC), 140–1, 153n113, 212, 233, 242, 251, 254
Menchú, Rigoberta 213
mestizo 89, 102, 107–8, 111, 237, 248
métis 89
Mexican Revolution 103
Mexico xi, 103, 106, 108, 212, 233, 258
Mexico City 104, 135, 211, 258
Mignolo, Walter 63, 148–9n1
Mill, John Stuart 49, 53, 55
misnaming 3, 15–16, 23, 31n28, 39n125, 61, 92–3, 98, 134, 151n34, 208; see also appropriation;
catachresis
mística 135, 148, 226, 238, 241; see also catachresis
modernity: capitalist 65; European 24, 129; see also appropriation; calculations; capitalism;
colonization; democracy, electoral; ethics; freedom; imperialism; liberalism; universal
Mohawk 99–100, 102, 117n94; democracy 213
monarchy 13–14, 24, 48
Montesquieu, Baron de 8
Mouffe, Chantal 62
Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST) see Landless Workers Movement (MST)
Movimiento Trabajadores Desempleado/ Unemployed Workers Movement (MDT) 169, 256; see also
Argentina, unemployed unions in
multiplicity 6, 25, 50, 59, 217, 227, 231, 139, 243
naming 17, 31n28, 35n74, 38n119, 107, 209, 236; everyday 213; failures of 208; Karen and 94–5,
112; politics of 61, 239; practices 176, 178, 248; see also appropriation; catachresis; misnaming
Nancy, Jean-Luc 29n23, 63
nation see state
national liberation 136
nationhood 21, 99
Negri, Antonio 29n23, 63, 149n2
neoliberalism 5, 8–9, 57, 62, 90, 139, 170, 177, 192, 198–9, 215; Aymara and 92; democracy and 56,
65, 188, 219; globalization and 126, 194; inequality and 31n28, 125, 228, 232; Hayek’s 56;
Landless Workers Movement and 131–2; regulation and 24
Nichols, Robert 30n24, 39n139
Nigeria 86
nonelites 20, 141
norm 6, 19, 21, 50, 52, 97, 227; abstract 35n74; democracy and 51, 65, 99, 109, 177; enforced 19,
209, 239, 243; Enlightenment 148; equality as 10; European 85; Indigenous 89, 99; inequality as
238, 240; liberal 238; local 243; political 128; proper name as 30n27; social 16–17, 20, 129–30,
133, 145, 210, 215; see also agency; failure; idealism; universalism
normativity 22, 52, 64, 141–2, 144, 163, 200n6, 214, 216; Other of 208
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) 105; see also globalization; Zapatista movement
Nunes, Rodrigo 29n20, 35n74
Occupy movements 211, 216, 248–9, 258
Okanaga 15, 98, 110, 241, 248–50, 258; see also en’owkinwiwx
oligarchy 49, 55, 89, 109, 133, 199, 230, 232; democracy and 8–9, 12–13, 23, 52, 65–6, 233, 235;
ladino 217
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) 191
Organización Frente Popular Francisco Villa Izquierda Independiente (OFPFVII) 135, 211, 251, 258
Others 6, 17–18, 20, 23, 38n121, 39n127, 86, 112, 189, 197–8, 207, 210–11, 219, 237–8, 241–2,
247–8, 250; absolute 98; Aymara as 89; of capitalism 147–8, 161; of communities and
organizations 210; of democracy 48–53, 63–6, 124, 232; difference and 18, 22, 233; of the state
22, 86, 98; subaltern 128, 147; see also appropriation; binaries; catachresis; differance; democracy
with a difference; equality with a difference
Pakistan 86
Paris Commune 98, 166, 237
parody 24, 129, 213; see also irony; play
participation 4, 21, 58, 60–1, 85, 91, 93, 95, 140–1, 143, 161, 181n42, 194, 211, 227, 236; in allyu
structures 110; assembly 54, 111, 168–9; citizen 3, 55–7, 60, 170, 188; collective 209; consensus
and 7, 167, 230; democracy and 15, 160, 168; democratic 62, 124, 137, 212, 238; direct 4, 55, 58,
60, 85, 112, 135, 166, 187–8, 219, 226; embodied 219; equal 3, 7–8, 10, 28n10, 38n119, 64, 95,
187, 192, 207, 211, 240, 242, 247, 249; exclusion from 16, 51; formal 136, 242; full 3, 14, 92, 106,
124, 167, 193, 219; horizontal 167, 172, 214, 226, 234, 239; obstacles 3, 4; open 14, 190, 198;
popular 14, 71n75; settler 144; spectacle of 196; subaltern 128; voting and 3–4, 136; women’s 105,
110, 144, 173, 193, 218, 234; see also democracy, participatory
participatory budgeting 15, 60, 251
participatory planning 139, 143–4
participatory practices 21, 60, 144, 166, 171, 176, 207, 215, 248
passivity 25, 54, 57, 60, 65, 138, 144, 161, 170, 188, 211
patriarchy 71n74, 143, 178; the state and 128
Pawnee 98
“people, the” 7, 55, 89, 149n2, 160–3, 176–7, 179n6, 179n8; Other conceptions of 173; reconfiguring
176
People’s Global Action (PGA) 190–1
Pericles 13–14
Plato 8, 13, 49, 55, 65, 232
play 98, 108, 176, 178, 207, 234, 236; see also decentralization; Derrida, Jacques; differance; irony;
parody
pluralism 11, 57, 62, 194, 242–3; liberal 35n73, 227
plutocracy 9, 23, 49, 65–6, 109, 199, 232, 250
Podemos 24, 169, 171–3, 177, 230, 233, 250–1, 253; see also 15-M
political 11, 20, 25, 28n13, 38n124, 48–9, 62, 137, 213, 234; in Andean Highlands 242; dream and
135; equality with a differance and 227; ethics and 37n104; limits of 7, 63, 228, 238
political parties 11, 15, 17–18, 36n100, 58, 105, 211; allyu and 90; in Argentina 166–8, 177, 196;
autonomy and 164; democracy and 5, 7, 107; difference and 233; failure of representation and 137;
Hayek on 56; in India 137; interests of 22; leftists and 61; in Mexico City 135; as Other 172; short-
term focus of 229; unequal structure of 165; in Venezuela 144–6; World Social Forum and 194–5;
see also Podemos
political theory x, 5, 7, 8, 16, 17, 28n14, 30n23, 31n27, 31n28, 36n101; see also appropriation;
binaries; catachresis; counterpublics; democratic practice; differance; difference; essentialism;
ethico-politics; ethics; event; power; real, the; social contract theory; universalism and specific
political theorists
poor, the 3, 17, 23–4, 147, 162, 175; access to resources 136; democracy and 51; healthcare and 212,
254; neoliberalism and 90, 125, 189, 198; participatory democracy and 229; Plato on 49; politics
of 130; self-governance and 212; subaltern and 50, 66, 193, 196
popular 24, 163, 173, 175
popular assembly see assemblies
popular education 137, 144
popular movements 20, 23, 136, 160–3, 173, 176–7, 179n8; in Argentina 166; attacks against 160,
162; autonomous 163, 165; Aymara 92; equality in 178; Spanish-language meaning of 179n1;
urban 126; see also mass movements
popular participation 14, 71n75
popular sovereignty 3, 5, 12, 58, 188, 200
popular will 9, 56
populism 49, 162, 179n8
poverty 87, 105–6, 131–2, 148n1
Povinelli, Elizabeth 27, 29n20, 35n73, 179n8, 220n3, 221n12
power 8, 9, 17, 21; see also centralized practices; decentralized practices; equality; failures;
inequality; political theory
practice see democracy; democracy, practices that weaken; democratic practices; egalitarian
practices; electoral practices; equality in practice; equalizing practices; everyday life; political
theory; singular; and specific practices
private property 85, 93, 98, 102, 242; Others of 241; regimes 191, 199, 217–19, 232; relations 165
public sphere 11, 182n73; see also democracy; political theory; subaltern
Quechua 89–90; see also ayllu
racism 39n125, 233
rationality 19, 26, 30n23, 137, 238; see also reason
Rawls, John 331n28, 35n73, 57
real, the ix, 5, 15, 23, 31n28, 37n104, 135, 151n24, 228; of democracy 22, 66, 129–30, 227; equality
and 239; of history 129; Indigenous 218; politics of 209; secular 242; see also counterfactuals;
counterrealities
reason 5–6, 11, 21, 30n23, 128, 145; democratic 50; European 19; limits of 51, 54; modern 11, 19,
156; populist 179n8; postcolonial 145; see also failure; freedom; idealism; liberalism; rationality;
universalism; violence
recognition 17, 61, 86, 93, 103, 127, 233, 236, 251; legal 138; state 86, 146–7, 212
representation 4, 7, 55, 255; electoral 8, 19, 26, 194, 213, 230; equal 96, 110; failures of 137;
impossibility of 21; subalternity and 127
rights see abstraction; civil rights; equality, as rights; human rights; War on Terror
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 59; see also social contract theory
rule by the few 3, 8–9, 56
rule of law 52, 57, 232; exception to 8, 65–6
Sachs, Jeffrey 90
sacred 101, 199, 214, 226, 241, 242, 247, 248; see also catachresis; modernity; spirituality
Sangtin Kisaan Mazdoor Sangathan/Sangtin Peasants and Workers Organization (SKMS) 138–41,
147–8, 234, 236, 255; nonsubalterns and 141–2; women’s leadership in 212, 229
Schmitt, Carl 8, 52
Schumpeter, Joseph 4, 36n101, 55–6, 65, 188
Scott, James 96–8, 114n16, 115n52
secularism 101, 111, 137, 148, 214, 221n13
self-determination 61, 164, 175, 255
Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) 191, 254–5
self-governance 6, 15, 20–1, 24–5, 89, 93, 130, 161, 164, 207, 211–12, 227, 242; in Argentina 165;
assembly and 217; democracy and 58, 165; Indigenous 86; Karen 96, 98; subaltern 129; Zapatista
103, 107; see also autonomy; democracy
settler colonies 12, 16, 19, 31n28, 50, 86, 99, 176, 199, 211, 232, 236; see also colonialism
Settlers’ Movement (Caracas, Venezuela) 142–6, 212, 240–1, 249, 251, 256; women’s leadership in
142, 146, 148, 212
Simpson, Audra 100, 117n94
singular viii, x, 5, 6, 13–15, 18, 30n23, 208–9; universalism 238–9; see also binaries; misnaming
Sista II Sista (S2S) 173–8, 228, 230, 236, 247–8, 250–1, 258; as separatist organization 234;
women’s leadership and 212
Sista’s Liberated Ground (SLG) 175–6; see also Sista II Sista
slavery 14, 39n125, 53, 101
Slum Dwellers International 145, 191, 257
social centers 25, 215–16
social contract theory 39n139; see also political theory
social relations 7, 11, 22, 25–6, 30n23, 37n108, 50, 52, 63, 97–8, 144, 148, 195, 207–10, 213, 215–
16, 233, 236, 243, 248; equal 129, 136, 146, 160, 178–9, 188, 207, 244, 251; gendered 24, 129;
horizontal 226; unequal 25, 168, 193
socialism 21, 37n104, 61, 87, 174; in Chiapas 103; market 20; in Venezuela 142, 144–6, 241
solidarity 138, 145–6, 148, 181n52, 213, 226
Solonian Constitution 13; see also assembly, ancient Athenian; Athens; democracy, Athenian
South Africa 50, 86, 102
sovereignty 10, 15, 35n74, 39n139, 59, 64, 173, 213, 218, 230, 235–6, 238, 244; democratic 188;
egalitarian 54; equal 58, 228; formal 163; limited 86; national 190; political 91; representative 23;
state 88, 101, 200n6, 228; territorial 93, 96; Zapatista movement and 212; see also popular
sovereignty
Spanish anarchist trade unions 98, 237
spiritual, the 101, 111, 214, 242; see also catachresis; sacred
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty 29n20, 29n23, 36n96, 36n100, 37n104, 38n124–38n125, 71n74, 149n1,
151n32, 151n34, 179n6, 221n13; Derrida and 30–1n27; Freire and 222n55; strategic essentialism
and 75n140, 155n155; see also capitalism; catachresis; colonialism; democracy with a differance;
difference; feminism; financialization; globalization; Indigenous communities; INGOs; irony;
Others; play; subaltern
squatter communities 125, 131–3, 142, 145, 233, 238
squatter movements 61, 215
squatting 165, 212, 215, 233
state 3, 9, 18, 20, 23–4, 27n1, 35n74, 85–8, 124, 126, 151n24, 163, 173; as body politic 161;
colonialism and 213; democracy and 31n28, 129; equality and 228; European model of 99, 142,
147, 197; founding of 52; globalization and 187; Indigenous as other to 66; liberal 109, 248;
Mohawk 99–102; as naturalized bond 63; postcolonial 136; scale of 178; Zapatista movement and
106; see also centralization; coercion; democracy, electoral; inequality; modernity; violence
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) 174, 258; see also beloved community
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) 174
subaltern 3, 20, 124, 37n111, 38n125, 51, 112n1, 124–31, 134–48, 148–9n1, 149n5, 151n24, 161,
191, 193, 242; agency 126, 128; class and 149n2; democracy and 61, 125, 127–30, 179n6;
demography 124–5; differance 148; difference 128; equality in practice 130, 146–8, 197, 243;
infrastructure and 128; literacy and 149n5; movements 38n124, 143, 147, 214; organization 129–
30, 138, 140; as Other 50, 66, 124, 128; as “position without identity” 155n155; practices 24,
72n80, 147–8, 191, 197, 238; resistance 50–1, 128; studies 150n22; supplement and 37n104;
women 145; World Social Forum and 195; see also appropriation; catachresis; differance; gender;
impossible; incalculable; Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty; unknowable
subaltern communities 19–20, 23–4, 125–30, 140, 146–7, 191, 240, 295, 228; epistemological
problems of working in 38n113; gender and 125; women in 130
subsistence agriculture 86, 105; see also Indigenous communities; Via Campesina, La
supplement 18, 31n28, 37n104, 233; see also Derrida, Jacques; difference
swidden (slash and burn) agriculture 86–7, 94–6, 126–7, 161, 218, 241
Thailand 50, 86, 93–5, 125, 162
Thatcher, Margaret 56, 194; see also neoliberalism
theory see political theory
Third Republic (France) 13
Third World see global South
Tiwanaku Manifesto 91; see also ayllu
trace 36n96, 37n104, 38n121; see also Derrida, Jacques; differance; Other
transnational corporations (TNC) 24, 187–9, 199
transparency 29n19
trust 28n16, 136, 169, 176, 181n49, 226, 238, 241, 247; see also catachresis
Tzul Tzul, Gladys 88
Union of Ejido Unions 104–5
United Kingdom (U.K.) 56, 215, 228, 233, 238; see also England; settler colonies
United Nations (UN) 28n10, 53, 113n12, 188, 191–2
United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) 114n12
United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) 134
United States (U.S.) 13, 50, 53, 56, 58, 65, 98, 131, 142, 176; democracy and 6, 8, 12, 35n86, 59,
182n76; egalitarian practices in 177; horizontal social movements in 173–4; Indian reservations in
86; Iroquois Confederacy and 23, 99; middle classes in 175; Mohawk in 99, 102; as oligarchy 13;
rule by exception 66; Senate 1; see also American Revolution
universalism 5, 12, 13, 16, 17, 21, 30n23, 30n24, 68n22, 75n140, 110–11, 112n1, 145, 147, 176, 178,
226–7; collapse of 6; critique of 68n22; democracy and 200n12; equality and 53; ethics and 66;
Lacanian 37n106; liberal 198, 241; see also appropriation; binaries; counterpublics; difference;
essentialism; inequality; misnaming; real, the; singular
unknown 15, 22, 39n127, 89, 141, 148, 242–3, 249; see also appropriation; catachresis;
imponderable; incalculable; unknown
unnameable 51; see also appropriation; catachresis; imponderable; incalculable; unknown
Vaddhanaphuti, Chayan 27
Venezuela 24, 142–7, 233
Via Campesina, La 24, 130, 147, 191–3, 196–9, 213, 228–30, 232, 234, 240, 242, 251, 257; see also
land; subsistence farming
vigilance 10–11, 21, 34n58, 52, 63, 65, 105, 251; see also democracy; Derrida, Jacques; equality in
practice, countermeasures for
violence 6, 10, 16, 21, 26, 34n58, 38n123, 48–9, 123, 161–2, 178, 193, 199, 207–9, 217–18, 238,
242; colonial and imperial history and 85; democracy and 52–3, 61; founding 9; inequality and
236; internal 18; Landless Workers Movement and 132; national 232; paramilitary 233; social 216;
state 9, 11, 39n139, 160, 189; against women 165; see also appropriation; catachresis; domestic
violence; Derrida, Jacques; gender, maternal mortality; healthcare; homelessness; Other; War on
Terror voting see calculation; democracy, electoral; incalculable
War on Terror, the 9, 188; see also equality, as rights; human rights; violence
“we” 176, 179n13, 208, 213, 249, 250; of the community 11; democratic 161; nosotras 171; as will
52; see also democracy; Other
wealth divide see Argentina, unemployed unions in; capitalism; democracy, capitalist; economics;
elites, economic; equality, economic; financialization; globalization; health care; homelessness;
neoliberalism; squatters
women see binaries; feminism; gender; inequality; universalism
World Bank (WB) 24, 113n12, 138–9, 189, 198, 232; see also financialization
World Social Forum (WSF) 25, 193–8, 214–15, 217, 219, 232, 234, 236–7, 240
World Trade Organization (WTO) 125–6, 187–9, 191–2, 198; see also financialization
Zapatista movement 23, 87, 89, 102–9, 112, 175, 212, 228, 230–4, 240–1, 247–51, 258; assemblies
104; autonomy and 105, 112, 128, 164, 233, 236, 238; “bad government” and 107; cultural
nationalism and 111; democratic practices of 102, 125, 236; equality in 111; gender and 110, 212–
13; “good government” and 107; military wing (EZLN) 106, 231; political difference and 108;
schools 147; women and 108, 127; see also Esther, Comandanta; globalization; juntas de buen
gobierno; Marcos/Galeano, Subcommandante; North American Free Trade Agreement