Subculture Communities And Anti-Globalization Protests In Seattle1999

This thesis is an interdisciplinary case study on the anti-globalizationmovement in the perspective of subculture. Subculture is not only a culturalphenomenon of the real world, but also an important focus topic in the field ofcultural studies. With the development of globalization of capitalism, subculturehas become more and more transnational and gotten involved in many importanttransnational political events. We can find many subculture factors and subculturecommunities no matter in the recent Occupy Wall Street protests, or in thoseanti-globalization protests around the world. This thesis tries to discuss thesub-cultural protests phenomenon on the basis of the case studies ofant-globalization movement in Seattle1999, namely “Battle in Seattle”, which isthe most famous transnational resistance movement in history. The questions of thethesis are how the subculture communities participate in the transnationalanti-globalization movements and why these movements are accompanied with more andmore subculture phenomenon. The first chapter of the thesis will introduce thegeneral process of the capitalist globalization and the general picture of the“Battle in Seattle”. The second chapter discusses the basic organization modelsand action characteristics of three typical subculture communities:“RuckusSociety”,“People’s Global Action” and “Black Block”. The third and fourthChapters will discuss the reasons why these subculture communities got involvedactively in the “Battle of Seattle” in the perspectives of the internal mechanismand external environment. The thesis argues that the anti-institution style of thesubculture community and the special effectiveness of subculture factor are theinternal mechanisms to impel these subculture communities into the “battle ofSeattle” while the development of capitalist globalization is a helpful externalenvironment.