This contemporary social movement is bringing together groups with diverse interests and adaptive strategies and unifying them in order to protest against global trade and monetary organizations. The relationship of movement participants is what Claus Offe has called "strange bedfellows", individuals who find themselves together galvanized against a common enemy, but who would not normally be found working together. For example, in organizing for mass mobilizations such as in Seattle, landmark partnerships were created between environmental and labor activists, who have in the past sometimes been stringently opposed to the agendas of each other the one seeking to, "Save the environment," the other asking to "save our jobs."

Activists are openly questioning the decision-making process in the global order, arguing that multinational corporations and supranational institutions have more say than nation-states, non-governmental organizations, or citizens affected by policy implementation. They choose the location of the meetings of capital or financial districts over that of locations related to national governments because they believe the nation-state is virtually powerless to effect change regarding global institutions like the WTO and multinational corporations. This is a direct illustration of the popular understanding of the reduced sovereignty of the nation-state as an actor. The opposition is expanded to include not just the global institutions, but the police and government agencies perceived to be pawns in the service of these organizations and corporate interests.

This movement is manifest in direct actions at the meeting of groups like the World Trade Organization but also in many small actions, for example, the destruction of a genetically engineered crop test plot owned by a multinational such as Monsanto or Dow Chemical. These symbolic forums serve to address the institutions that are gathering and to present a message to a world stage, but they also serve as a commitment process for the actors involved. Not to be underrated because of their relative lack of entrance into the public sphere, yet equally important, are the small group meetings and relational networks of individuals and group participants around the world who participate in this movement.

I use the examples of the street and the Internet as places in which this movement manifests itself physically, yet I feel that it is only truly locatable in discourse. The umbrella label of the "antiglobalization movement" encompasses a diversity of organizations, individuals, goals and tactics. This movement contains activists who skirmish with police in the street in large protests such as the one in Quebec City, but it also contains the person who chooses to shop at an independent store rather than a large chain. It contains the activist hacker who engages in virtual sit-ins, clogging access to a website maintained by corporate interests, but also the Indian peasant group that burns a field of Monsanto terminator seed cotton. The complexity of this movement and it multiple manifestations cannot be overstated.

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