ABSTRACT
When the first World Social Forum met in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in January 2001 to challenge neoliberal globalization by claiming “Another World Is Possible,” few would have predicted the rapid growth in the number of activists at what became an annual global event. Nor would they have foreseen the proliferation of Forums from very local to regional, national, and continental ones (Glasius and Timms 2006). While impressive, this expansion of Social Forum activism has been uneven, both in terms of who participates in Forum activism and in where subglobal Forums emerge. This chapter explores Social Forum mechanisms that account for geographic variation in the global diffusion of this innovative form of collective action.
