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Political and social movements are both empowering and power-seeking: they seek both to mobilize civil society and overwhelm state institutions. As organisations they mobilize collective power, generating solidarities and transforming social structures. As such, political organisations both challenge power and exercise power. This article addresses organizational vehicles for political change in Australia, drawing out limits and possibilities. Three organizational forms are discussed - the political party, the non-government organization (NGO), and the social movement - in terms of their capacity and limits. The social solidarities and social structures that frame political organization are debated, highlighting the impact of political conflicts over ecological change. The article ends with a discussion of the proceeding four articles, drawing out shared themes and implications in terms of the relationships post-Howard, between the Australian state, political parties, NGOs and movements.

PORTAL opens 2006 with a special selection of papers focusing on the transformative power of social movements. In an age of globalisation and of ideologies of globalism, we debate sources and potential for alternative scenarios, for ‘other worlds.’ Many commentators have proclaimed this the global age, where humanity lives under one world power, one world market, and one world order. Yet many other worlds find new and fertile ground in this age, flourishing against the norm. Social movements set new agendas, inspire participation and crystalise solidarity. At the centre of contestation, they can create emancipatory knowledges—knowledges for change. In this issue of PORTAL we ask how social movements generate new ways of being, new subjectivities, or new modes of existence. We debate the role of affective meaning, of symbolic action and collective conscience, and discuss the place of reflective action. Contributors debate the dialectics between power and counter-power, and the role of strategic conflict and dialogue. They analyse sources of revolutionary and transformative change, discussing the praxis of counter-globalism.

Globalism is a contested concept, but perhaps best understood as a spatial strategy, which disempowers those unable to transcend the fixity of place and social context. Under globalism fluidity becomes a key source of power, enabling the powerful to liquefy assets, to disembed, and thereby displace, political, social or ecological impacts. The infrastructures of globalism enable the disembodied extension of power across territory, to the extent that one model, universally applicable for all societies, is positioned as supreme. The only possible challenge to globalism perhaps, is through a similarly disembedded counter-movement, that mirrors the global reach and power of mainstream globalism. The praxis of counter-globalist movements suggests a different tendency, one that centres on the assertion of particularity against universality. Expressed in the legitimacy of ‘many worlds’ against ‘one world’ globalism, such resistance centres on exposing the material effects and foregrounding concrete and material experiences of globalism. Movements mobilise against the disembodied logic of globalism on the basis of co-presence and inter-subjectivity, and are embedded in relational concepts of selfhood. They are often intensely embodied and are radically emplaced through militant localism and trans-local dialogue. Counter-globalism thus does not seek to defeat geography; rather it embraces it, as the starting-point of mobilisation. The starting point of this article is thus to analyse globalism as a spatial strategy, a strategy of displacement grounded in material power. Globalism thus signifies the capacity to exploit and dominate at distance, from the sanctity of corporate boardrooms, military briefings and media cutting rooms. The claim is to universal market, military and normative power, but the impact is of extended and deepened division. Centres of power appear more as islands, or enclaves, defined against the backwash effects of counter-globalism, and the logic of offensive defence. Counter movements gain traction as paradigmatic challengers, grounded in the aspiration to alternative ways of being.

After Hurricane Jeanne in September 2004, surveillance for mosquitoborne diseases in Gonaïves, Haiti, identified 3 patients with malaria, 2 with acute dengue infections, and 2 with acute West Nile virus infections among 116 febrile patients. These are the first reported human West Nile virus infections on the island of Hispaniola.