During Unit 3, social movements are explored as a form of
counterpower that involves social actors challenging 'the power embedded in the institutions of society for the purpose of claiming representation for their own values and interests' (Castells, 2015, p.
It can be situated as part of Manuel Castells's (2007, 2013) concept of communication power and
counterpower in the sense that there are different types of communication flows that shape our networked society.
The guarantee of permanent democracy is not the filling up of all the dead times and empty spaces by the forms of participation or of
counterpower; it is the continual renewal of the actors and of the forms of their actions, the ever-open possibility of the fresh emergence of this fleeting subject.
I argue that these less tangible changes can be made visible if we focus on the physical and social constitution of space as a window into the multiple ways that power and
counterpower are enacted, contested, and negotiated.
There is a need to extend the strong electoral force that we have now from the ballot to organizations that will turn the thirst for change into a coherent
counterpower. Liberation, after all, is a social act.
Loader and Dan Mercea, eds., Social Media and Democracy: Innovations in Participatory Politics (New York: Routledge, 2012); Kristi DeWolf, "
Counterpower in a Dual Network: An Examination of Young Canadians Using Facebook to Engage in Political Activity," ma Thesis, Acadia University, 2014.
An Ethnography of
Counterpower in Southern France, London: Ashgate.
The aim is to put into practice principles of solidarity, equality, pluralism, and horizontality so as to resource the potential to establish
counterpower to the alienation and dislocation associated with contemporary capitalism.
It sees itself rather as a grassroots
counterpower set on building the embryo of an alternative economy based on the necessities of life.
Be the
counterpower, let it be that you are here to serve, not to take over," Ramadan said.