Manuel Castells - Movimentos sociais para mudar o mundo

I think the most important thing is that social movements have always been, throughout history, what changes society. And then politics, political parties, enter the institutions, sometimes against, sometimes in favor of the movements. But the agents of change, what really changes the world, are the social movements.

And social movements are always emotional movements. They always begin in history. And, at the same time, they are movements based on communication between the people, that through spontaneous reaction, get in touch, think together, act together, organize together.

What fundamentally changes in these movements? It's really the technology of network communication. Movement aren't defined by technology, movements spawn, as always, from a feeling of injustice, a feeling of fight against inequality, against poverty, against oppression, against exploitation.

It has always been like that throughout history. What's different nowadays is that, in order to fight against those causes of human evil, they had to organize in formal organizations, with leaders, agendas, and then from within the movements this began to mirror the domination structure that existed in society. And, at the same time, it was easy to suppress the movement, in other words, if leaders are arrested then the movement is finished.

What's new is that the internet and mobile networks, the internet on mobile platforms, fundamentally allows people to organize in a concrete but not permanent way, but in networks arisen from this process of indignation and will to fight. And there are no leaders because they aren't necessary, because the movement adapts itself, people start to debate, start to organize, one day someone is the leader of a given action, some other day it is someone else. Therefore, the networks turn into the collective subject of mobilization and the collective subject of leadership.

This isn't a utopia. This is what's going on. All the movements I've observed during the last three, four years, and it took place.

We're talking, at this moment, of July 2013, and a week ago another movement began in Turkey which is also different in terms of content, but has the same form, it's the same pattern. We've seen this in Iceland, in the Arab countries, in Europe, in Spain in particular, on the United States, in Latin America, in China, although people don't know, but there are also movements like that in China. And in Russia.

Now in Turkey. So, we're facing a new form of social movements which are characterized by being capable of self-organizing, self-mobilizing and self-managing, without asking permission to no political party, to no leader, because they dispose of a communicational technologic capacity which never existed before in history, and because emotions spread instantly through virality. Virality is fundamental on the internet.

The fact that any image, any word, any fact that takes place, spreads globally, and allows all those movements to be both local and global. The great theoretic debate is local, is global, and is both. The place where people live and where people feel.

The power is global, therefore one has to fight globally and not just locally, and the internet allows one to be local and global at the same time, and organize and mobilize without the need for leadership. This is totally new in history.