Acknowledgments
For their generosity over the course of this long-term ethnographic research project, I am deeply indebted to the nearly 150 activists, community organizers, and Social Forum organizers in Europe, Turkey, and the United States who took time to share their experiences and entrust me with critical insights into their challenges and struggles in the building of democratic processes and coalitions across differences.
When I stepped off the bus in Genoa to attend my first meeting leading up to the planned European Social Forum in the summer of 2003, almost all of the houses I saw showed the rainbow-colored PACE (peace) flag. Millions of people had been in the streets protesting for global justice and an end to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. As I write these lines, many of those whom I met at the time are in the streets again, forming new and even broader coalitions. May this book be a resource for those who give so much of themselves to the work for global justice and real democracy. May they experience the insights and the benefits of political translation both within and beyond their own organizations and groups.
My writing has been informed by fruitful debates with many academic colleagues who lent me their powerful spirit and support. I owe the deepest intellectual debt to three of my teachers who influenced my thinking and my research: Donatella della Porta, who gave me the open ground, the rigor, and the methods that supported my growth; Francesca Polletta, who gave me the conceptual language I needed in order to speak and who read numerous drafts of this work; and Jane Mansbridge, who gave me wings that enabled me to fly by helping me to finalize this book.
Archon Fung, James M. Jasper, Michèle Lamont, and Jackie Smith helped me turn my project into a book and gave me precious feedback on several of the chapters. Marco Oberti, Yves Sintomer, Thomas Risse, and Klaus Eder helped translate the story of this book into a language that speaks to both sociologists and political scientists. I thank Lesley Wood for her stimulating encouragement at different stages of the writing process, and for her in-depth reading and fine theoretical reflections on the finalized manuscript. I thank Nicole Deitelhoff for her support, both as a mentor and as a critical analyst helping me situate this work within international theories of politics and deliberation. I’m grateful to Cathleen Kantner and Patrizia Nanz, whose theories of linguistic and cultural diversity, European politics, and translation were foundational to my research.
I thank Sidney Tarrow for his spirited encouragement at all stages of this research. My warm thanks go to Jeff Juris for his advice and his support throughout, and for his close and critical reading of the finalized manuscript. I thank Jeffrey Alexander, Sean Chabot, Nina Eliasoph, Myra Marx Ferree, Brigitte Geisel, Edwin Gentzler, Jürgen Gerhards, Moira Inghilleri, Mareike Kleine, Amelie Kutter, Sabine Lang, Caroline Lee, Paul Lichterman, Alice Mattoni, Quinton Mayne, Doug McAdam, Deborah Minkoff, Michael McQuarrie, David S. Meyer, Geoffrey Pleyers, Belinda Robnett, Vivien Schmidt, Philip Smith, and Kathrin Zippel for their feedback and support.
I had the great fortune to be supported by my colleagues in the Pioneer Valley and the Five Colleges Social Movement Research Workshop, who commented on numerous earlier versions of this research: Nancy Whittier, Steve Boutcher, Mary Ann Clawson, Rick Fantasia, Jasmine Kerrissey, Joya Misra, Velma Garcia, Daisy Reyes, Marc Steinberg, Carolyn Shread, Kristen Shorette, and Stellan Vintagen. I also had the opportunity to present this work to Bill Gamson, Charlotte Ryan, and the members of the MRAP Research Group in Boston and to the Politics and Protest Workshop in New York City, as well as to the Social Movements Working Group at UC Irvine.
During the final months of writing, I have been generously supported by my colleagues at the University of Copenhagen; I am particularly indebted to the members of the research group on Knowledge, Organization, and Politics, and to Janus Hansen, Michael Hechter, Anders Blok, Mikael Carleheden, Bente Halkier, Peter Gundelach, Jonas Toubøl, and Hans-Jörg Trenz. The members of the Institute for Social Movements and Protest at the Technical University of Berlin have accompanied me since I sat on the bus to Genoa in 2003, and I want to thank in particular Simon Teune, Helena Flam, Dieter Rucht, Anna Cecilia Schwenck, and Elias Steinhilper. I am thankful to Ruth Wodak for her early guidance regarding the critical potential of my research, and to Thorsten Thiel for crucial insights that helped me refine my conceptualization of positional misunderstandings.
Funding by the German Academic Exchange Service provided me with the opportunity to carry out the research described in Chapter 1. A grant by the European Union’s Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship Program enabled me to conduct the research for the remaining chapters. I thank the UC Irvine Sociology Department and the UC Irvine Center for the Study of Democracy, who hosted me generously during the fellowship. My research also benefited from a Democracy Fellowship at the Harvard Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. The central concepts in this book emerged in the context of a vibrant exchange with Archon Fung and the postdocs and doctoral students at the Ash Center and at the Harvard Kennedy School. I am indebted to Sabine Hark and the members of the Center for Research on Women and Gender at the Technical University of Berlin who kindly hosted me during the final phase of manuscript revisions; this support was made possible by research funding provided by the European Union’s IPODI grant.
Some material in Chapter 1 appeared previously within “Is ‘Another’ Public Space Actually Possible? Deliberative Democracy and the Case of ‘Women Without,’’’ Journal of International Women’s Studies 8(3): 71–87, © 2007; in “Deliberative Discussion, Language, and Efficiency in the World Social Forum Process,” Mobilization 13(4): 395–410, © 2008; in “Language and Democracy ‘in Movement’: Multilingualism and the Case of the European Social Forum Process,” Social Movement Studies 8(2): 149–165, © 2009; in “The Disciplining of Dissent and the Role of Empathetic Listeners in Deliberative Politics: A Ritual Perspective,” Globalizations 8(4): 519–534, © 2011; and in “Translating Democracy: How Activists in the European Social Forum Practice Multilingual Deliberation,” European Political Science Review 4(3): 361–384, © 2012. I thank the journal editors and the publishers for permission to reuse the material.
My very special thanks go to Sarah Rabkin for her fine insights and her stimulating critical suggestions as an editor. It has been a joyful journey, and I feel fortunate to have worked with such a terrific editor; she helped me find my voice as an author. I am thankful to the Cambridge University Press editor Robert Dreesen and the Cambridge team and to two anonymous readers for the Press who graciously and generously provided substantive and stylistic comments, and whose close critical reading helped me tremendously.
I thank my friends and my community for holding me – Riqi Kosovske, David Seidenberg, Sally Fuller, Jennifer Levi and her wife Sue, Stacey Novack, Diane O’Donoghue and her wife Kimbell; Mimi, Megan, Beth, Kurt, Leon, Tahera, Millay, Sabine, Isabell, Nadina, Carmen, Uta, Anika, Gesine, Monika and Stefan, Martha, Wilma, and Rainer; and my friends in Eifa: Tanja, Diana, Mario, Carina, Sascha, and Wolfi.
I thank my wife, Noa, for accompanying me with her strong and soft heartbeat as we walk together through this adventurous life, across oceans and over mountains. During the most turbulent times, I could find a refuge in the lands I come from and with my sister Sina and my mom, Elke Fabel Dörr, and her partner Hardy; Noa’s parents, David and Hagar; Wölkchen and Clementine; my grandma Rolandi; granddad Willi; Chrissi, Goti, Eva, and Werner; and Noa’s aunts and their families.
