Spaces of dialogue? The case of the World Social Forum Tunis 2013 from the perspective of young, local volunteers

Abstract

In this article, we use a multidimensional approach to empirically study the concepts of dialogue and contact zones in the setting of the World Social Forum Tunis 2013, with a special emphasis on young, local volunteers. Although young Tunisians played a crucial role in the revolution, they have been side-lined in the construction of the country’s new democracy. Furthermore, although many studies have paid attention to the creativity of young activists in the World Social Forum, very few have thoroughly analysed the engagements and experiences of young, local participants. This is surprising, especially since the youth represent one of the biggest groups of participants in World Social Forums. Moreover, many World Social Forum volunteers, the backbone of the forum, are young locals. This article presents a combination of Jabberi’s autoethnographic work and Laine’s ethnographic work on the World Social Forum Tunis 2013. Using the concepts of de Sousa Santos, the article shows how young World Social Forum volunteers actively produced translations of knowledge and practices that enabled multicultural contact zones that connected the different actors in the forum.