Peace Review 16:4, December (2004), 421-428Counter-Tribes, Global Protest and Carnivalsof ReciamationGraham St. JohnWhen Reclaim the Streets (RTS) activists passionately recount the first Londonevents, as they have recently in We Are Everywhere, by the Notes from Nowherecollective, they effectively recollect what became a template for popular resist-ance in the emergent "movement of movements." The appearance in the mid1990s of a global justice movement consisting of multitudes with a commongrievance against neoliberalism suggests the presence of a "single issue" protestmovement. The "issue," condensed as "One No, Many Yeses", encompasses theentire planet, but is fought on multiple fronts, in variant guises, with diverseinfluences. And while commentators report that this anti-corporate globalisationmovement has been stirred by such seemingly disparate events as the Zapatistauprising and Reclaim the Streets, it also appears that the anti-disciplinarycounter-culturalism of an earlier period was getting a second wind.Indeed, by the beginning of the twenty-first century, slogans like "We AreEverywhere" and "The Whole World Is Watching" were being enthusiasticallyrecycled. Something was happening here, again. And with the maturation ofnetworked cultural politics, this time around it appeared truly global. Whileextensive comparisons with earlier movements cannot be undertaken here, thisessay contributes to discussions of methods through which global anxieties areaddressed and redressed in local acts of resistance. In particular it makesexploratory forays into the cultural politics of reclaiming (of land, culture, theinternet, the commons, the streets), which appears to have obtained a zeitgeist-Uke grip upon those compelled to resist corporate globalization.The proliferation of anti-corporate struggle necessitates the search for usefulmodels through which to comprehend cultures of resistance and youth activism.The tradition of youth cultural studies provides us with little assistance in thisregard. Attending to "rituals of resistance" and discrete "subcultures," thetheoretical developments emanating from Birmingham's Centre for Contempor-ary Cultural Studies (CCCS) provide inappropriate heuristics for the comprehen-sion of formations networked in opposition to corporate rule. The semiotic andphysical tactics of contemporary activism are not synonymous with "symbolic" orstylistic disruption, nor are they efforts at "winning space" from the parentculture for leisure and recreational pursuits. In his Profane Culture, Paul Willisidentified how, for post-war working class youth, struggle was waged exclusivelythrough "lifestyle," and since stylistic transgression provided no real solution totheir subordinate structural position, style was the "tragic limit" of working classcultural politics. While style—a desire for cutting-edge or "hardcore" transgres-ISSN 1040-2659 print; ISSN 1469-9982 onlinc/04/030421-08 © 2004 Taylor & Francis LtdDOI: 10.1080/1040265042000318644422 Graham St. Johnsions of received rules of conduct, dress codes, language and consumptionpatterns—is integral to contemporary activism, reclamation not recreation ap-pears to be the desired end. It is in the "uses of style" that contemporary culturalpolitics is differentiated from the forms of "resistance" contemplated by CCCSresearchers among working class youth, and even from the "authenticity" andcool-oriented youth media practices attended to by later researchers. In suchuses, theories of "subculture" or indeed "clubculture" are rendered inappropriateto a movement whose message and goal is an alternative to neoliberalism. Andwhile an understanding of contemporary resistance would recognize, withAlberto Melucci, that the form (the symbols, the internal relations, the culture)of the movement is indeed its "message," it would not forget that the formationconstitutes a mounting response to capital.What appears immediately striking about reclamation is that it involvesbehaviors simultaneously tactical (instrumental, pragmatic) and festal(playful, spontaneous), a contiguity most apparent in the carnival of protest or,to use the term coined by Sydney activist and "idea jockey" John Jacobs, the"protestival." The protestival is a site of creative resistance rooted in aestheticprotest and insurrectionary pleasure running from the 1960s back to the ParisCommune of 1871 (the "festival of the oppressed"). It finds nourishment inavant-garde art movements that have challenged the distinction between art andprotest, seeking "situations" through which to penetrate, reveal and out-marvel"the spectacle" of the present. It has strong roots in an anarchist traditionevolving through the International Workers of the World, the Italian autonomesand the anarcho-punk movement emerging in the UK in the 1980s. It is enabledby alternative and independent media and the adoption and repurposing ofinternet communication technologies.These threads would culminate in a global do-it-yourself (DIY) culture, aninternational milieu attracting those opposed to market fundamentalism andcommitted to ecological sustainability, social justice, human rights and radicalexpression. Decentralized collectives and affinity groups with roots in the peace,green and women's movements ofthe 1960s and before would experience rapidproliferation as the internet and digital media technologies enabled communi-cation, organization and networking capabilities in the 1990s—developmentsthat would enable significant alliances between activists in the global North andSouth.In the UK, where RTS would emerge, this milieu of a global DIY culturefloated immediately downstream from the acid house rave explosion, elements ofwhich were reclaiming their own heritage and empowering themselves throughdance—a not altogether trivial circumstance, as I will explain. Since the 1970s,dissidents were actively reviving, recreating and reinventing semi-nomadic tradi-tions through free festival cultures. "Being together" in their difference. New Agetravellers made exodus from modern Britain in events like the Stonehengesummer solstice festival; in the U.S., the Rainbow Family would hold majorannual (eventually international) gatherings. Achieving their fullest, and oftenonly, expression in the festal, in the "temporary autonomous zone," in art, theseCounter-Tribes, Clobat Protest and Carnivals of Reclamation 423counter-tribes seemed to exemplify those micro-cultures Michel Maffesoli held