tactics
It's too easy to argue that if we're no longer in a world where They tell Us what to do, then we're free. It's too easy to build a romantic notion that our participation in meaning-making ensures the meaning always comes out to our advantage, as Ang says, "a romanticised view of the practices of everyday life... as always evading the structures -- institutional, ideological -- imposed on them -- as the site of resistance per se." (Ang, 1994: 206).
So, what to do? "Dropping out" is no solution, with its atavistic, equally romantic construction of a 'return' to nature. The perruque5 practiced by De Certeau's French workers (De Certeau, 1984) -- and admittedly now by workers in industrialised and white-collar workplaces everywhere -- may give the worker back some pleasure and dignity, along with a sneaking feeling of having 'put one over' the boss, but, like shoplifting, does not put a serious pressure on capitalism as a whole, or even on individual corporations who now incorporate the practices into their planning and budgets.
Of course, De Certeau is not suggesting that surfing the Web at work for private pleasure is going to change the world. Rather, he suggests, "Let us try to make a perruque in the economic system." (De Certeau, 1984: 27). Consumer boycotts? Perhaps: using capitalist tools of consumption against itself, withholding capital.
And it's not as though the sides are clear, either. There is a form of double consciousness encountered in protest spaces: individuals are present as protesters and consumers simultaneously. Some wear Nike shoes. None have escaped the multinational labels altogether. What's more, identity-as-structured-in-difference owes a lot to consumption capitalism: the freedom of protesters to express themselves through dress, hairstyle, body modifications is a luxury not available to many of the non-Western bodies they claim as siblings in the struggle.
And to some extent, it is this problem which complicates "anti-globalisation" protest: on some level, protesters in the West benefit from capitalist consumption culture. And few are willing to give up their privileges, even assuming they could "opt out". So, the form of protest they engage in is of necessity one of subversion, while remaining within the system, "divert[ing] it without leaving it" (De Certeau, 1984: 32).
The range of encounters in which postmodern capitalist globalisation engages results in some interesting coalitions: greenies protest alongside forestry workers, placards declare allegiance to every conceivable campaign. One criticism of these loose "anti-globalisation protests" has been this seeming lack of cohesion. However, in the absence of any Grand Theory (see also Ang), this multiple approach is the only possible response to the equally varied issues at hand. In fact, the coalition of interests should be seen as a strength: viewing the resulting 'chaos' as 'disunity' is to misinterpret diversity as undifferentiation.6
Nor should we be diverted by strange allegiances in the other camp: capitalism does not need the state and in fact is frequently at war with it. Howard's explicit renunciation of protest against capitalism as "unAustralian" is in part a panicked expression of allegiance to a more powerful partner (the global capitalist economy, represented at that moment by the WEF) by an increasingly irrelevant player (the federal government of a small nation).
