Weaving political fields: non-violent INGOs and the global grass roots Open Access

Global–local studies elucidate how local actors engage in often unexpected ways with global models, remedying somewhat the binary assumption that homologous global change acts in conflict with local-level agency. Here, I extend the domestication framework by exploring the global–local interaction among transnational and local activists as a ‘weaving’ of global and local fields through (1) the constitution of how new relationships, institutions, and objectives define new fields; (2) the constitution of new forms of actorhood leading to new entitlements within those fields; and (3) the impartation of new rules for field engagement, in this case non-violence. I examine fifteen years of archival documentation from Peace Brigades International in Guatemala during the 1980s–1990s civil war. I explain how the global–local interaction involves the creation of unique fields for political change and new mobilisation opportunities and, in turn, alters the discourse and structure of local and global dimensions of conflict.

International non-violence organisations are operated by individuals who often dedicate their lives to worldwide human rights activism, believing non-violent resistance to blend the most effective and peaceful means with the most desirable democratic ends. Where many international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) are focused on creating a legal structure for human and other rights through state and policy transformation, these transnational activists participate in building a global repertoire for citizen-led, non-violent claims-making and for supporting local capacity for grass-roots rights work. In this paper, I examine archival data on the activities of Peace Brigades International (PBI), one of the longest-running global non-violent accompaniment organisations dedicated to sending volunteers into conflict zones, where they accompany and support local rights activists on a daily basis. I argue, first, that this type of activism cannot be accurately characterised by either top-down or bottom-up schema. And I demonstrate that the objectives of such transnational mobilisation are much broader than merely diffusing a particular protest objective or tactic into a new context. I draw on innovations in global neo-institutionalist theory, namely, domestication studies, to explore the transnational mobilisation dynamics and outcomes of organisations such as PBI. I explain how such transnational mobilisation constitutes a ‘weaving’ of national and global political fields into a unique field in its own right, a field that ultimately changes the shape of both the local and global fields among which the new resistance field remains partially embedded. I articulate how transnational ‘field-weavers’ work with local activists to create new interstitial spaces for grass-roots mobilisation that not only incorporate but also domesticate and innovate global–local objectives, networks, tactics, and strategies.

I begin my discussion with an exploration of the ways in which social movement studies have begun to incorporate, but not yet fully theorise, the transnational realm of interaction. I then review the elaboration of the domestication framework, and its concept of global–local fields, exploring its potential for theorising a field of global–local mobilisation among civil society networks. My examination of this process in the work of PBI proceeds with a brief overview of the organisation’s history, objectives, and global activities. My analysis develops through three subsections highlighting the main findings on how the organisation operates within a global–local field of mobilisation: (1) through a global–local constitution of a new local field for democracy building, (2) through a constitutive theorisation of local actors and their accompanying, universal entitlements, and (3) through the impartation and development of a global–local repertoire of claims-making, in the emergence of a global-Guatemalan non-violence movement. I then conclude with a discussion of the importance of the domestication framework for understanding early-stage and transnational mobilisation, where global–local alliances work to create political, cultural, economic, and organisational opportunities, promised rhetorically but with ominous obstacles for practical implementation.

Movement scholars have given increasing attention to globalisation as a social force shaping mobilisation. This scholarship tends to address global–local interactions in three discrete ways. Elements of each point to the need for expanded theorisation of the global–local field as a unique context of mobilisation.

Studies of global justice movements emphasise discursive and organisational resistance to economic globalisation, documenting the ways in which global justice activists do not oppose globalisation as the intensification of cultural exchanges per se, but organise across borders to protest particular forms of neo-liberal economic policy (della Porta, Andretta, Mosca, & Reiter, 2006; Flesher Fominaya, 2014; Flesher Fominaya & Cox, 2013; Mayo, 2005). These global movements develop from both internal and external political and economic shifts that eventuate in a concentration of political power among dominant actors in the world polity (della Porta & Tarrow, 2005). Global justice movements are ‘both an outgrowth of globalization and a challenge to “business as usual”’ (Moghadam, 2012, p. x). The salient frameworks in this research, therefore, tend to focus on describing the transnational and international sources of inequalities and political constraints against which global justice movements organise (see Flesher Fominaya & Cox, 2013; Koopmans, 2013; Smith & Johnston, 2002). They also help to map out how movements have become increasingly transnational in their scope and communication structure.

Another group of studies scrutinise how local movements draw on global civil-society networks as accessory resources to local mobilisation. Movements are considered to engage in ‘boomerang’-style organising, pulling in influential allies to leverage greater power against targeted states from the outside (Andia, 2015; Dale, 2008; Keck & Sikkink, 1998; Sikkink, 2009; Tarrow, 2005). Transnational networks create favourable ‘opportunity space[s] into which domestic actors can move, encounter others like themselves, and form coalitions that transcend their borders’ (Rothman & Oliver, 1999; Tarrow, 2005, p. 25). Studies of these INGOs expand a traditionally nation-based theory of political process, incorporating the ability of local actors to engage in multilevel advocacy, still rooted in local concerns and conditions (della Porta & Tarrow, 2005), and building local pressure and solidarity (Johnston & Almeida, 2006; Motta, 2014; Rucht, 1999; Smith, Chatfield, & Pagnucco, 1997). Allies are used in ‘domestic loops’ aimed at influencing local politics towards activists’ interests and in ‘deleveraging’ the positive support targeted states have among international governmental alliances (Spalding, 2015). The transnational field is engineered by locals to ‘scale shift’ national mobilisation (Spalding, 2015; Tarrow, 2005) and strategically include wider international communities in their efforts.

A third focus of global movements research examines cross-national diffusion. These studies detail the many ways in which movements share tactics, strategies, and the formulation of objectives (Keck & Sikkink, 1998; Kolb, 2005; McAdam & Rucht, 1993; Tarrow, 2005; Walsh-Russo, 2014). This research outlines the transnational conditions that shape the national adoption of mobilising forms (Givan, Roberts, & Soule, 2010; Johnson & McCarthy, 2005) and explicates the translation process involved in moving tactical forms among loosely networked civil societies (Chabot, 2000; Chabot & Dyvendok, 2002; Soule, 1999; Wood, 2012). Nationally oriented studies focus on questions of how the national context constrains channels of communication with outside affiliates (Giugni, 1995; Tarrow, 1989, 1994), mutual interests among affiliates (Soule, 1999), and the adoption and reinvention of claims-making (Chabot, 2000, 2012). Again, this scholarship remains largely case-comparative and views different levels as distinctive, rather than systemically and transnationally linked. Theoretical synopses of the diffusion of tactics call for a new lens on cross-border ties, but remain limited to examining how one practice or orientation transfers from one field to another or to several fields (Dobbin, Simmons, & Garrett, 2007; Givan et al., 2010; Guidry, Kennedy, & Zald, 2000; Shawki, 2013; Strang & Meyer, 1993; Strang & Soule, 1998). New empirical studies are needed (Chabot & Dyvendok, 2002; Gallo-Cruz, 2012a; Gallo-Cruz, in press-a), and future inquiry should aim to demonstrate how new organisational forms derive from transnational structures of contention and agreement (Bunce & Wolchik, 2010; della Porta & Tarrow, 2005; Gallo-Cruz, 2012a; Roggeband, 2010; Smith & Weist, 2012; Tarrow, 2010).

While each camp’s insights underscore the imperative of taking global mobilisation seriously, social movement studies have yet to extensively theorise the transnational dimension as a unique social space. Salient concepts like the ‘boomerang’, ‘scale shift’, the ‘spiral model’, and even ‘global political opportunities’ emphasise the agentic drive of local agents into a transnational realm where they skilfully capitalise on extra-national resources. There is growing attention to transnational networks as key mobilising mechanisms, but much of this research describes the global–local interaction in ways that reinforce a binary and methodologically nation-oriented viewpoint as opposed to relational and global–local thinking (Gallo-Cruz, in press-b). INGOs, as transnational movement actors, construct and expand agendas in social and political development on issues including human rights, environmental protection, education, global business standards, and scientific advancement (Boli, Gallo-Cruz, & Matthias, 2011; Clark, Friedman, & Hochstetler, 1998; Kaldor, Anheier, & Glasius, 2003). They also develop and expand new global discourses and mechanisms for solving global social problems at the state level (Betsill & Corell, 2008; Keck & Sikkink, 1998; Reimann, 2003; Steffek, 2013; Stone, 2004). But many studies have classically focused on INGOs as having spread, and operated, through ‘top-down’ forms of political pressure aimed primarily at the state (Boli & Thomas, 1999; Florini, 2000; Lang, 2012; Reimann, 2009; Rosenau, 2006; Sundstrom, 2006). The typical approach to INGOs envisages them as either functionally correspondent to local needs and requests (à la Keck & Sikkink, 1998; Risse, Ropp, & Sikkink, 1999), or as ‘the result of [a] top-down decision-making process, in which organizations’ leadership decides how and where to commit resources’ (qtd in Barry, Bell, Clay, Flynn, & Murdie, 2015, p. 87; see also Brysk, 1993; Carpenter, 2007; Smith & Weist, 2012; Wallerstein, Chase-Dunn, & Sutter, 2016; and the review of this literature by Rossi & von Bulow, 2015). We know much less about a growing number of INGOs that focus not on state transformation per se, but on building up grass roots, local movements, and civil societies (Christie, 2012; Clark, 2009; Panda, 2007; Rossi & von Bulow, 2015; Smith et al., 1997), where state advocacy may be a secondary, instrumental objective (but cf. Deats, 2009; Gallo-Cruz, in press-a; Kim, 1999; Moser-Puangsuwan & Weber, 2000; Nissen, 2003).

Diffusion studies, which identify how interacting social structures influence behavioural transmission and interpretation (Strang & Soule, 1998), offer a clear focus on the movement of a practice or organisational form across borders. Diffusion presents one key dimension of domestication, but the domestication process entails much more than diffusion. Diffusion analysis in social movement studies elucidates the political, legal, and economic conditions under which activists learn to transmit resistance practices from one context to another (Edwards, 2014; Landy, 2015; Strang & Meyer, 1993; Walsh-Russo, 2014). There may indeed be a common interest between diffusion and domestication studies in the convergence of global and local social forces. In fact, some diffusion studies are firmly positioned in the framework of institutionalisation analysis.¹ Domestication studies, in contrast, focus on the conflictual interactions that sometimes characterise this process. The domestication framework works to explain the epistemic objectives driving global–local interactions (those aimed at defining or redefining new situations, problems, and how best to address them). This framework clarifies the process by which new social worlds are created, with the national or regional context as the main ‘domus’ or site of interest (Alasuutari & Qadir, 2014). The construction of new epistemic communities formed either around, or in response to, the globalisation of policies represents a fundamental component of the expanding institutionalisation of a ‘world polity’ (Ruggie, 2002). That is, diffusion constitutes a process of transmission, and diffusion studies may secondarily address transformations consequential to this transmission process. Domestication studies, however, represent a growing branch of global neo-institutionalism that articulates the more extensive process of how new social worlds emerge, constituting new social actors, roles, relationships, structures, and goals in both transformative and limited ways (Gough & Shackley, 2001; Hannah, 2011; Koenig, 2008; Schneiker, 2016).

The field, defined broadly as a site of social struggle (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992), is a concept used in social movements studies as a heuristic device to understand the structure of relationships among the different players both within and beyond movements. This device also makes clear the role of frameworks for meaning and strategies for action in this mobilising structure (Fligstein & McAdam, 2011; Gamson & Meyer, 1996; Ray, 1999). Outlining the logics of fields helps to explain strategic development and institutional stability (Larson & Lizardo, 2015; Martin, 2003; McAdam & Scott, 2005; Williford & Subramaniam, 2015). Similarly, field research helps us to understand how logics shift with critical events and with the development of opposition (Armstrong & Bernstein, 2008; Goldstone & Useem, 2012; Thornton, Ocasio, & Lounsbury, 2012). Nevertheless, these frameworks, in their application, also tend to follow the methodological nationalism of movement studies in their elaboration and application and, when there is comparison, reinforce binary categorisation (cf. Fligstein & McAdam, 2011; Landy, 2015; Bourdieu also asserted that materialist conditions trump symbolic frameworks, 1984). Domestication studies use the concept of the global–local field to unpack the ‘field battles’ of global–local policy interactions, positing that in the transnational nexus, such interactions serve three epistemic purposes: to develop (1) a novel ontology of the environment, a new understanding of what drives the social world, what is wrong with its current reality, and how best to fix it; (2) a reconstruction of who actors are, not just in a social-topographical sense, but also in order to establish an understanding of their individual and relational entitlements in the field; and (3) an explication of the norms, ideals, or rules of field engagement (Alasuutari & Qadir, 2014). I believe this framework can also help to expand innovations in social movements theory to emphasise the multidimensionality in which political processes occur (as in Armstrong & Bernstein, 2008). In addition, the domestication framework can help to further demonstrate how both fields of protest and movement identities are reformulated in transnational spaces (as in Milani & Laniado, 2007), and the way in which inter-field networks create unique overlapping spaces of action and meanings that reconstitute the lives of movement affiliates (as in Barassi, 2013).

A framework for domestication can be understood as the process ‘whereby local trajectories of social change constantly converge or near each other but exogenous elements are tamed so they are experienced as domestic within each polity’ (Alasuutari 2013, p. 104). This framework conceptualises the sites of interaction between global and local initiatives as distinctive social spheres, and seeks to understand how these fields are embedded and entangled in global and local worlds while still remaining distinctive. Although domestication studies increasingly seek global comparisons to elaborate the framework, Alasuutari and Qadir (2013) explain that detailed attention to the local context where global models are adopted is important, because isomorphism on a global level does not mean easy enactment or homogeneity. Rather, the nation state becomes a translocal place as it engages with the introduction and incorporation of global ideas, and seeks to actively contribute to this process. In policy studies, this process is often conflictual, bringing together various local and global actors with oppositional interests, objectives, and interpretations of proposed policy changes. Regardless of how field battles conclude, the domus, those actors and institutions that have in some way responded to global social forces, reinforce the identity and structure of local forces even as they transform, proffering new models to the world polity (Gallo-Cruz, 2013). This new locality has at once expanded in its participation in global discourse and changed, as it remains unique (Alasuutari, 2009). The same global events can tie various national fields together in a surge of attention, concern, and reaction to those events from distinctive interests at the local level (Alasuutari, Qadir, & Creutz, 2013).

Domestication theory moves beyond binary global or local thinking in two important ways. First, the theory’s focus on the process of the ‘field battle’ emphasises the way interactions, much like those of a literal battlefield, constitute a unique social space with institutionalising scripts for interactions and organisational effects beyond the objective of policy debate. Second, Alasuutari and colleagues have provided a strong theoretical framework for thinking through the epistemic dynamics of domestication changes. This enables us to elaborate how phenomena such as institutional logics (Larson & Lizardo, 2015) or collectively shared understandings (viewed in discrete localities by Fligstein & McAdam, 2011; Ray, 1999) emerge anew through the interaction of the global and the local, and in the development of a transnational sphere for deliberating and addressing social problems. Although domestication studies tend to focus on policy adoptions among governments in interaction with intergovernmental bodies (Alasuutari, 2011; Alasuutari & Rasimus, 2009; Qadir & Alasuutari, 2013; Rautalin, 2013; Syväterä & Alasuutari, 2013), I believe the framework also proves useful for studying cooperative forms of transnational mobilisation, where global civil-society actors come into a local context to aid and support the lead of local activists, share transnational ideas and tactics for claims-making, and facilitate inclusion into global networks. Here, I apply the domestication framework in order to understand the relationship between INGO actors and local activists as they relate in a global–local field-weaving effort. I broaden the domestication perspective with a focus not on state or organisational transformation, but on the development of new, indigenous networks for a citizen-led democratic movement where new, interactional fields cohere in complex interactions. I argue that understanding multilevel political mobilisation necessitates moving beyond an understanding of the transnational realm as accessory to local mobilisation and demands theorising transnational interactions as unique, emerging, and crucial sites for mobilisation and political transformation.

PBI, established in 1981 and modelled on several earlier models of ‘Gandhian’ peace armies, is one example of hundreds of organisations explicitly dedicated to globalising non-violence (see Gallo-Cruz, 2012a). The organisation is one among dozens that provide third-party intervention, the placement of non-violent transnational activists into local fields of conflict. Generally speaking, these INGOs adhere to a non-violent resistance repertoire that embraces non-violent means as intrinsically related to non-violent, democratic outcomes. Thus, they encourage non-violent resistance even – and especially – in the face of violent repression (Weber and Burrowes 1991).²

PBI reports that in 2014 it supported over 291 activists from 57 different organisations: human rights defenders in Honduras, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, Nepal, Kenya, and Indonesia (prior programmes including Nicaragua, El Salvador, Sri Lanka, North America, and the Balkans); the direct intervention of 92 activists from 22 different countries; and the staff and volunteers in 16 different project countries. They report that their major efforts have included 1738 days accompanying human rights activists; 407 visits and meetings with human rights defenders; 343 meetings with governments, local, and regional authorities; 1266 meetings with diplomatic corps, international agencies, NGOs, and coalitions; international speaking tours for 27 human rights activists; 75 publications, video, and radio appeals; and 45 workshops on non-violence attended by 749 human rights defenders.

PBI offers one visible example of the organisational diffusion of non-violence as a global repertoire. Defining the repertoire as ‘a limited set of routines that are learned, shared, and acted out’ (Tilly, 1977, p. 264), Tilly holds that repertoires are not isolated acts on the part of individuals, but develop in a particular social context; ‘they emerge as a result of struggle’ (Tilly, 1977, p. 264) among a variety of actors, authorities, claims-makers, policy-makers and bystanders (see also Tilly, 1993). These repertoires, Tilly explains, become so institutionalised within their national contexts that national movements emerge to embody and pursue the further institutionalisation of repertoires (Tilly, 1977, 1993). My work has, in part, sought to globalise Tilly’s nation-oriented repertoire analysis to account for the increasingly transnational ways in which claims-making repertoires develop (Gallo-Cruz, 2012b; Gallo-Cruz, in press-a). From non-violence’s formulation as a ‘method for all mankind’ to the global organisational networks and structures that formally spread knowledge of and tactics for non-violence, non-violence emerges not only in national contexts, but also in a transnational context of international relationships and global ideas about how best to institute peaceful conflict resolution and social change (Gallo-Cruz, 2012a). I therefore examine PBI as one carrier of the global repertoire. The organisation’s orientation to its first field project in Guatemala was one of many exercises in globalising non-violence to be found on its global organisational agenda. But I also explain how PBI’s work goes far beyond merely diffusing a set of resistance tactics. Here, I provide a close examination of how such repertoire expansion reconstitutes the field of global–local mobilisation and the global building of a grass-roots network.

I draw on archival data from PBI’s first field project in Guatemala, the most extensively documented of its early cases in the PBI archives housed at McMaster University. I focus on Guatemala as the initiating – and thus earliest – case of institutionalising an organisational approach to weaving the global–local fields; focusing on one case also allows me to expand on how domestication works.

When PBI arrived, Guatemala was enmired in a violent civil war. Resources were limited: political repression was so heightened that neither positive nor negative political opportunities were open to activists. The organising efforts of Indigenous peoples, and their effects on the broader collective consciousness of all those organised in Guatemalan civil society, were utterly stifled in a political climate of frequent disappearances, kidnapping, torture, and assassination. By examining mobilisation through the eyes of PBI’s field workers, I provide a different perspective than global social movements or INGO studies that have positioned INGOs as working outside and external to local mobilisation. PBI workers were directly embedded in the local field, spending days and nights with local activists and taking serious risks to their safety alongside and on behalf of local activists. And yet they were international actors with globalist orientations and access to a distinctive set of global resources, opportunities, networks, and frames for non-violent action. In contrast to some external INGOs, however, PBI was consistently working with local activists to weave these two worlds into one.

Following its independence, Guatemala experienced waves of dictatorship and military repression punctuated by two brief stints of democratic activity: in 1944, when peaceful demonstrations precipitated the election of a democratic leader who introduced a series of social-democratic reforms,³ and in 1966, following another democratic election. From these earlier periods of democratic mobilisation, a nascent structure of civil-society organisations was set in place, including labour unions, campesinos (organised farmworkers), student groups, and an array of social organisations that worked for democracy on various levels (Konefal, 2010). But a ruthless military regime in the 1970s targeted the elimination of leftist leaders. The 1976 earthquake that claimed 27,000 victims added to the early 1970s political assassination count of 50,000 and left more than 1 million people homeless, many of them going as refugees to Mexico. Despite this added devastation, the political crackdown continued. In 1981 alone, some 11,000 people were said to have been executed for political reasons, and this was just the beginning of a new ‘scorched earth’ strategy that blazed through the countryside in acts of land seizure and the violent repression of organising efforts. The military state co-opted territories rich in natural resources and killed thousands who resisted or stood in their way. In 1982, the brutal General Efrain Rios Montt gained power through a military coup. But, following international criticism of his illegitimate usurpation of power and violent crackdown on opposition, Rios Montt announced that a ‘democratic opening’ would occur in 1983, extending greater freedoms to civilian groups who would be protected (PBI, 1988, p. 2).

PBI chose Central America for its first project only after considering ‘the global situation to find where to direct the energies of a potential new organization’ (PBI, 1982, p. 2). PBI considered several other Central American sites, specifically El Salvador, Mexico, and Panama. El Salvador and Mexico would eventually receive PBI support, but Guatemala was chosen as the perfect initial location to place a peace team at that time. This was chiefly because of the perceived political opportunity in the country’s pledge to the international community of a political opening for democratic participation, scheduled to begin 23 March 1983.

Also, the response to PBI’s query regarding the desire for international support was an exuberant and urgent ‘yes’.

This local, situational context would become a basic criterion for all future PBI projects: they would establish country-specific programmes where political opportunities had been promised, but openings to real opportunities for civilian organisers remained tenuous.

In 1983, with few resources, only four in-field volunteers (including two last-minute replacements for original volunteers who dropped out), and a small, accompanying international network of supporters, the team set up a house in Guatemala City (many more would join the team as it grew over the years). Over the two extended periods that PBI operated in Guatemala, and in the many other countries that now host its activists, PBI has contributed to global–local cultural institutional shifts in the constitution of the global–local conflict field, its participants, and forms of engagement, all of which, I argue, are well elucidated by a domestication framework (Alasuutari & Qadir, 2014).

Constituting a global–local field begins with the weaving together of global and local ideals and practices. On a general level, global–local fields are constituted through the creation of new field goals (drawing together but uniquely adding to those in global and local fields) and the defining of legitimate field players and rules of engagement. For PBI Guatemala, this meant bridging the decoupling between the discursive commitment to a promised democratic opening (a promise that would accord the state greater legitimacy among desired international allies) and the ideological and structural reality at the local level that directly contradicted and worked against this commitment.

PBI’s declaration to the local community that ‘the team is dedicated to the protection of the “free expression by all sectors of the Guatemalan people” and to the support of “all in Guatemala who seek to make the announced ‘political opening’ real”’ (PBI, 1983) was a first effort in shifting social attention towards investing in the on-the-ground construction of what many suspected was a cosmetic change or ‘façade democracy’ (as in Ritter, 2015). For PBI the façade was an opportunity, a social imperative for a new phase of an active, public civil society that legitimate international observers could use to institute local opportunities for action.

In the early days in Guatemala, PBI team members focused on accompanying activists who had received death threats.

Then, as repression heightened in new waves of attacks and threats, the team chose to protect those they deemed could most advance human rights advocacy, ‘based on the strategic consideration that the continued existence of these organizations provides protection, in turn, to other grassroots initiatives in the region’ (Jaffe, 1998). They understood their role to be collaborative in creating openings for reconstituting a participatory democratic field, while more actively linking that local field with the global in the process. ‘International presence can provide some protection for local activists, and team members can serve as sources for non-violent strategies and techniques, as well as an avenue for international communication’ (PBI, 1983, p. 2). PBI’s 1992 General Principles mandated that volunteers would ultimately ‘co-operate with and serve in local, national and transnational Peace Brigades’. They were to ‘act as links and/or representatives of the international community to help in generating mutual dialogue between conflicting parties and provide them with opportunities for contact with the outside world’ (PBI, 1992, p. 1). They did this on two levels. First, they held the governments accountable to a global rubric of legitimate state-making, making assertions like, ‘Under Guatemala’s new constitution, the international conventions to which the country is a party in principle take precedence over national laws’ (PBI, 1987, p. 1). Second, they cleared the way on the ground and modelled the tactics needed for civil society to organise more publicly: ‘We seek to demonstrate that as international volunteers, citizens can act boldly as peacemakers when their governments cannot’ (PBI, Undated).

Global–local domestication, therefore, encompasses and goes beyond mere transmission or social learning. Global–local field constitution entails the weaving together and reconstitution of various actors, institutions, understandings, and orientations from two fields to create a unique social space for interaction positioned among global and local spheres.

Three points of entry were given to incoming activists to help them understand the balance of weaving together global and local fields. First, they were tasked with the specific mission of globally spreading Gandhian non-violence. ‘Our mandate is the promotion of peace following the resolution of conflicts through the path of non-violent negotiation, dialogue and all nonviolent methods’ (PBI, 1992). Second, the organisation declared itself

And third, because global–local field constitution required PBI to position itself at the nexus of players, institutions, and processes it wished to incorporate in its vision of global–local democracy, the organisation was compelled to actively build relationships with all stakeholders to find common ground:

By its second year in the field, members of PBI had personally met and discussed human rights situations with all 44 registered political parties throughout the country as well as head officials in the national government and military and also university and religious leaders (PBI, 1985, p. 1). PBI also increasingly expanded contact with the United Nations, the Canadian and US State Departments, and the growing number of national groups in the USA and Europe that could lobby on PBI Guatemala’s behalf. As international membership grew over the years, PBI’s annual report on Guatemala invited global actors in the human rights regime into the everyday of local Guatemalan human rights activities through meticulous reporting on the challenges and issues faced by a variety of local activist groups across the country. From striking factory labourers’ actions, to the pleas of mothers of the disappeared, to the exhumations of bodies of those massacred in civil war, the global–local field maintained its unique intersectionality at the nexus of global and local affairs; it constantly and actively brought insiders and outsiders into an engaged dialogue about how best to realise Guatemalan democracy and Guatemalan human rights.

The struggle to wedge apart new openings for democratic mobilisation was long and arduous, however, and progressed in fits and starts. Among military and state officials, the focus seemed to be solely on pleasing international authorities. As one early memo notes, the team went to meet with a local military officer who affirmed that ‘the military was quite interested in projecting a good international image,’ which he explained included an improved effort to make possible the return of displaced persons to their native lands – an issue that, at the time, was a hot topic in the international news. When PBI fieldworkers queried the officer about his interest in human rights training for the soldiers, however, he was at once ‘visibly not very friendly to the idea’ (PBI, Undated 2). Then, on the way out of the small town, they passed through an ‘anticommunism workshop’ organised by the officer that all local residents had been highly encouraged to attend (PBI, Undated 2). A few years later, after a brief period of forced exile of PBI workers, the US government intervened to reinstate their international aid worker status in Guatemala. Upon re-entry, PBI activists met with the Guatemalan Human Rights Procuradora who again stressed the importance of improving Guatemala’s international image. He stated that the situation had and would continue to improve for human rights work, that he hoped people would ‘go out in the streets and shout their ideas’. He planned to enact formal investigation of past abuses and tighten sanctions against military offenders. He did not, however, think much of the potential of the local women’s or Indigenous movements (with whom PBI had been working) to help Guatemala. He stated he would only be open to collaboration with Amnesty International and the Red Cross. He thus affirmed the importance of international image and compliance, according authority to some highly visible international actors, while denying the authority of civil-society actors within Guatemala (PBI, Undated 3, p. 4).

Ultimately, the organisation had to admit that in helping human rights workers on the ground, it was ‘clearly walking a thin tightrope politically’ (Lindsay, 1983). But as PBI considered its most important early work as ‘opening channels of communication between groups’, it had to seek out those groups who felt they had no opportunity to openly advocate for themselves and build the trust of both these groups and their adversaries (Lindsay, 1983). PBI activists theorised that they could act as neutral ‘go-betweens’ and constitute a field in which both parties could begin to relate to each other as equal participants. Practically, this meant PBI volunteers had to bear in mind the historically constituted limits of a highly stratified local field in which they were attempting to become embedded. They were obliged to carefully navigate the transformation of the rules of that local field into those of the new global–local field they were working to ‘make space for’ (Lindsay, 1983).

Furthermore, PBI activists constantly struggled to maintain their ‘non-meddling’ stance in the face of the gross inequalities of the local field. Many of the activists’ diary notes to the home office, entitled ‘informes’, or reflections, indicate a distress about Guatemalans’ abject poverty and suffering; they questioned their ethical stance as activists in not working towards broader forms of socio-economic development. To this end, focusing only on non-violent support was decidedly both an instrumentalist and a substantive objective.

The organisational solution to this conundrum was that PBI remained specialised in its mandate to support one particular aspect of civil society building: nurturing grass-roots human rights advocacy at the local level. ‘Upon deeper reflection, though, can there be true development, any development, without a minimum of human rights?’ (Robinson, 1987).

Another serious concern was that non-partisanship was imperative to ‘build trust’ among the local forces PBI intended to engage in a common, global–local democratic field (Lindsay, 1983). To this end, PBI adopted a firm stance against volunteers’ perceived collusion with only one side of the conflict.

This required some disengagement with the ideals that may have inspired non-local activists’ participation in the project as well as an active re-envisioning of a democratic society where different sectors could engage as equals. This shift entailed epistemological work on the part of international field workers. At one early international conference, PBI organisers declared, ‘The question is often asked: how can you be non-partisan in face of such monstrous injustices, human rights violations, many kinds of oppression? It might be more accurate to say we are partisans of the people on both sides’ (Walker, Undated). Despite the difficulties, the organisation saw non-partisanship as a necessary element of constituting a new field for democracy. The conveners concluded, ‘Seldom are peacekeepers neutral in feelings and outlook. They are nevertheless capable of non-partisan BEHAVIOR [sic] when required’ (Walker, Undated).

Therefore, PBI Guatemala worked to fashion a new and distinctive social field using some new and some pre-existing ideas. It involved a process of institutionalisation that carried elements of existing paradigms or social worlds into new frameworks for meaning, structure, and interaction. And this new framework served to define the new objectives of the field. In this way, PBI was instrumental in creating cultural opportunities where political opportunities were lacking (Kurzman, 1996; Ritter, 2015). As a 1992 Annual report ‘looks back’ on progress made, ‘Such a climate of uncertainty played an important role in the work of the Guatemalan team.’ This happened in their work with civil-society groups because ‘requests for support skyrocketed.’ But this effect also gave them greater local grounding on which to work more deeply on constructing a democratic field for non-violent mobilisation by bringing national-level leaders into an engagement with the civil-society groups they supported. ‘As in years past, the team diligently cultivated public relations with high-ranking officials in the government, the military, the diplomatic corps and the churches … ’ (PBI, 1992, p. 2).

Beyond defining field objectives and structure, a second primary field-construction task lies in defining the nature of field actors. A constitutional theory of actorhood posits that the social nature of the actor and her relationship to other actors in a polity are culturally emergent and change over time and across social contexts (Krücken & Drori, 2009; Meyer & Jepperson, 2000). The constitution of a global–local field in Guatemala meant that one of PBI’s primary tasks was to facilitate the constitution of civil-society actors as distinct from their governmental and military counterparts, but equally entitled to the same rights and decision-making power. For practical day-to-day activities, this meant that new civil participants had to be sought out and engaged, new notions of citizenship and entitlement had to be incorporated in the dialogue, and a link had to be made between these notions of citizenship and the global human rights regime in which PBI saw itself as firmly anchored.

This did not mean that global–local actors were constituted anew; indeed, the fact that there was a strong, but dormant, democratic constituency was a significant aspect of PBI’s decision to open a country programme in Guatemala. But an initial assessment of the local situation disclosed stark power inequalities among different Guatemalan actors, with the military and government holding a repressive power against any type of popular democratic organising. Notes of communication with Amnesty International on the Guatemalan situation specifically report how

Following this assessment, an early PBI Guatemala press release declared,

It was, therefore, an urgent task for PBI to first identify which actors had been profiled as erasable from civil existence; second, to seek them out and encourage their remobilisation; and third, to bring them all together in an engaged, new global–local civil-society domus. The 1992 General Principles noted that contacts were to be established in three ways and on three levels: ‘1) among similar minded groups on the same side e.g. popular movement, 2) between opposing groups and individuals i.e. parties in conflict and 3) with the outside world i.e. the international community’ (PBI, 1992).

Archival documents are also replete with affirmations of the importance of PBI’s work as a supporter of Indigenous initiatives, as locally driven.

To this end, early reports document how the team actively sought out dormant labour and campesino organisations throughout the countryside soon after their arrival. PBI workers learned that these groups were among the most threatened and persecuted, along with journalists and human rights lawyers (PBI, 1987, p. 30). By the late 1980s and early 1990s, PBI was nurturing active networks with a whole host of civil-society actors. The organisation pointed to its most prominent efforts with ‘peasant organizations, trade unions, human rights groups, Mayan organizations, student associations, legal aid offices, squatters’ settlements, women’s organizations, and religious bodies’ (PBI, 1994). Additional contacts were made with state health-care workers and Indigenous groups, and PBI was instrumental in encouraging the development of a farmers’ movement of over 5000 to resist conscription in the Guatemalan military in the largest Guatemalan county (Mahoney, 1988, p. 3). In this particular effort, PBI brought together religious workers and farmers in a dialogue about political and cultural marginalisation, directly investing in a new collective identity of Indigenous peoples. This was, therefore, not only a local re-weaving, but also a global–local one: to do so, PBI actively invoked the rights for Indigenous peoples outlined in the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

Here the domestication framework offers another important insight. One double-sided consequence of domestication processes is that new elements emerge in the confluence of interacting social forces and yet, although partially derived from global or ‘outside’ origins, they come to be constituted as intrinsically local, understood as ‘natural’ to the local environment (Alasuutari, 2009; Anderson, 2002). This effect underscores the institutionalising (as opposed to diffusing) thrust of domestication.

Beyond locating dormant civil-society actors, PBI has also helped to grow the field with new types of civil-society actors who emerged on their entrance into the global–local field (and within the first decade of PBI’s work in Guatemala, dozens of new groups became active). This entrance occurred under the aegis of supporting local non-violent initiatives. Although earlier waves of Guatemalan democracy and human rights advocates had engaged in non-violent resistance, PBI worked to build local dedication to non-violence, with non-violence theorised as a coherent repertoire that is both tactically effective and morally superior (Gallo-Cruz, 2012). Through this pointed organisational objective, PBI introduced new modes of thinking about best practices for human rights advocacy into the global–local practice lexicon.

One exemplary organisation (among dozens) to emerge through this process was Grupo de Apoyo Mutual (GAM), the Group for Mutual Support, an organisation of wives and families of the disappeared. PBI was directly supportive in establishing GAM, which would eventually become the first visible, publicly organised group to stage large demonstrations against the disappearances and assassinations in this period. It is, therefore, notable that their identity as one of the most active human rights groups of the 1980s and 1990s grew in dialogue and through the direct promptings and support of PBI. If there was a semblance of a boomerang-style action among local activists wanting global activists to provide external pressure on the government to listen to locals’ pleas, it may have been Nineth de Garcia’s first letter to PBI. In this 1984 communication, de Garcia notes that she had tried pleading with local authorities herself. She asked, would PBI not plead on her behalf concerning the whereabouts of her disappeared husband? But PBI, as a global–local field weaver, quickly redirected this request for support through international advocacy, explaining their pledge to non-partisanship and encouraging de Garcia to organise something they could support as collaborators on the ground.

Later, de Garcia would recall how important that small suggestion was – it sparked the early mobilisation of mothers and wives of the disappeared.

But once local contacts were established and new local actors developed and organised into a human rights network, PBI also served as a funnel for these contacts to create their own global human rights networks, thus illustrating the multidirectional flows that occur in global–local field-weaving.

The International Gathering of Activists in 1991 is considered one of the great successes of the international effort to build up democratic organising in Guatemala. In this second ‘Encuentro’ or Gathering of Inter-Continental Activists hosted in Guatemala, the participants celebrated 500 years of resistance against the various legacies of repression suffered by Indigenous, African-American, and popular organisers in Latin America. And yet the gathering was framed as an ‘encounter of two worlds’, two worlds in constant tension, two worlds that PBI worked to negotiate (PBI, 1992). The Guatemalan resistance against repression became part of a global movement against violence and injustice, the legacies of colonialism, and the ongoing realities of neo-imperialism in the global South. To support military rule in Guatemala was, therefore, declared as a global as well as a local injustice.

A final element in the weaving of a global–local field is the institution of rules for field engagement. This crucial thread ties together inventive conceptions of newly theorised solutions to social problems, and newly constituted entitled actors. For PBI, this meant the implantation of non-violence, one that was at once universal and wholly Guatemalan. PBI believed they could help to cement the relationship between human rights initiatives and the desire for democratic peace through support for creating locally derived and resonant non-violent practices. The organisation pursued two main tasks to these ends. The first was to model and facilitate non-violence through non-violent dialogue with all parties comprising the field of contention. The second was active and extensive formal non-violence education and training.

To carry on with the example of GAM, PBI gave GAM a vital line of support and a potent model for developing a non-violent repertoire. Early on, a PBI activist travelled to El Salvador and interviewed the CO-MADRES⁴ on GAM’s behalf. The CO-MADRES, a Salvadoran organisation of wives and mothers of the disappeared, had been quite active in protesting non-violently. They gave the following advice in a tape recording to be sent back to GAM.

In the 30 years PBI has had a permanent presence in Guatemala,⁵ PBI has also held hundreds of educational workshops to impart essential non-violent action knowledge and training. An early memo notes,

But again, the thrust is towards developing a domesticated form of non-violence. A memo reviewing the principles and mandate of PBI in Guatemala noted that, ‘Workshops and other programs may be organized with local groups and individuals to discover self-confidence and dignity; overcome fear; develop the capacity for communication, dialogue, analysis and methods of mediation, negotiation and reconciliation’ (PBI, Undated 5). Over the years, the team developed an impressive number of general and specialised training programmes for the various groups with which they have worked. Workshop topics have included understanding and defining non-violence; the relationship between non-violence and human rights; communication, consensus, and conflict resolution and negotiation techniques; political analysis; programme networking; and campaign development (PBI, 1990). They have also held hundreds of more issue-specific workshops to assist groups in analysing and preparing actions to address particular problems and demands.

In human rights workshops, PBI trainers linked conceptions of entitled citizenship to practical application in active claims-making, giving concrete examples for how to use specific techniques to defend human rights. Human rights workshops included agendas that broke down conceptually how and why participants had the right to protest (PBI, 1990). One training report illustrated how participants were asked to undertake an ‘analysis of the Guatemalan situation’ as they were aided in deconstructing different issues in the newspaper. Then, they were trained in how to strategise the construction of a tactical movement to address these issues. The participants were walked through the process of identifying who the main claims-makers were, how they should frame themselves, with whom they should build solidarity networks, to whom they should direct their claims, and what kind of resistance techniques would be effective (PBI, 1990).

In practical terms, PBI activists noted that ‘strategic discourse has its own language’ and that ‘knowledgable pedagogues’ would be needed among fieldworkers to aid in this process (PBI, Undated 6). Akin to instruction in a spoken language, PBI activists saw non-violence education as an exercise in delivering the different epistemological building blocks that activists deemed necessary to piece together a more holistic understanding of the non-violence repertoire. Activists had to first search for local, cultural anchors with which non-violence could be associated; then they could add to and expand that knowledge as related to the field of actors, institutions, and objectives they wished to support.

Upon PBI’s entrance in Guatemala, the team quickly realised that ‘non-violence’ was not a term that resonated with colloquial knowledge.

This meant that knowledge and practice of non-violence had to be shared as part of a more comprehensive explanation of how it fitted into the global field with which PBI activists linked it: the global spread of universal ideals of human rights. ‘[In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights] we have a window through which we can define a clear objective and provide a positive motivation for the fight’ (PBI, Undated 7, p. 2). This undertaking is much more extensive and entails more epistemological work than diffusion.

To provide some building blocks from which a conception and practice of global non-violence could emerge, activists decided early on that instruction was first needed on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

This proved effective because the rights delineated in the UDHR were rights the population recognised. Their understanding, however, was local and unrelated to the UDHR. After the UDHR became common epistemological currency, a bridge could be built to thinking about non-violence as a systematic and global method for achieving those rights, articulated anew. PBI inculcated local claimants and policy-makers into the salient framework and language of the global field. PBI worked to inspire local activists to use these approaches to harness the power of new international human rights networks, while adapting these tools for realising local approaches to social problems.

What global–local field weavers strive for is a collaborative domestication of non-violence, which is neither akin to locals playing boomerang with their international resources, nor a top-down imposition of global forces of change. The case of PBI in Guatemala illustrates that much was gained in building up an indigenous organisational structure with the aid of collaborative outsiders. And this field-weaving of the global and local was instrumental in numerous ways. First, because repression was too high, the involvement of outsiders networked with influential global actors provided a necessary check that promises made in the global field would be followed by efforts in the local field. Through a process of domestication, field-weavers also initiated the constitution of new societal objectives. They launched these objectives in a field they envisioned would bring various sectors together in democratic engagement. PBI helped to bolster new conceptions of actorhood defined by globally derived ideals of human rights, but embodied by locally developed Guatemalan constituencies. The organisation also imparted global knowledge of non-violence, with the explicit aim of investing in both local iterations and innovations in global–local non-violence. In all of these ways, global–local field constitution goes beyond the diffusion of protest forms or tactics. It involves extensive efforts in the social construction of new sites for struggle that are uniquely grounded in local social problems. These global–local fields are then linked to global social networks and the epistemic worlds that bring disparate types of actors and institutions into a sustained engagement around common concerns – even if interests and motivations remain divergent.

The domestication framework helps to expand theorising on transnational mobilisation in a number of ways. Where the field concept has only recently gained traction in social movement studies, it remains conceptualised in utilitarian terms – how to map out the actors, institutions, and logics of engagement surrounding mobilisation projects. In this sense, the field concept suffers from some of the same limitations of political process mapping, where a multi-institutional politics approach provides a more dynamic and processual model of the institutions and how forms of power shape mobilisation trajectories (as in Armstrong & Bernstein, 2008; Bob, 2002; Broadbent & Brockman, 2011; Rossi, 2015; van Stecklenberg, Roggeband, & Klandermans, 2013; Tsutsui & Wotipka, 2004). The domestication lens enriches the insights of institutionalisation studies by examining new fields as they emerge from the dynamism of multilevel conflicts or struggles and by giving close attention to the cultural and discursive mechanisms of social struggle and transformations that bring about new fields of political interaction.

Here, I have also expanded on the domestication framework in a number of ways. First, I have extended the domestication lens into an on-the-ground view of transnational activism aimed at building up civil society capacity. The case of PBI in Guatemala helps us to understand field battles aimed not at the adoption of a new policy or organisational message or practice, but at the emergence of a new site for social struggle in which a number of serious social problems may be redefined through the lens of a global repertoire for human rights. Here the ‘battle’ is one against the decoupling of global promise and local practice. The principal objective of interacting global and local forces is much broader and is aimed at societal reconstruction. Furthermore, this process of delinking from global labels and interpretive frameworks is qualitatively different from what Chabot (2012) describes as overcoming ‘hyperdifference’ and ‘overlikeness’, both vital processes in transcultural diffusion. In contrast to diffusion efforts, the objective of domestication efforts is to bring together new combinations of constituencies into new, complex mobilising fields. The exercise at hand consists of more than the reinvention or expansion of a repertoire into a new and distinctive field; it entails the reconstitution of a local field into one that weaves the global and local together, redefining problems, goals, actors, and rules for field engagement. The ontological work of redefining problems, solutions, actors and institutions, and rules for engagement, is more far-reaching and long term. The nature of field battle, too, is qualitatively different in the particular stage of field-weaving in which transnational activist organisations such as PBI become involved. Where social movement studies typically investigate the favourable alignment of political and cultural opportunities, resources, and institutions, global–local field-weaving efforts work to create the possibilities for these opportunities to emerge, even if in distinctive and disconnected ways, in the hopes that the local motor of social change will gain the fortitude to galvanise their favourable alignment.

At such early stages of global–local field constitution, we can also expect to see imbalances of power on various levels. The PBI Guatemala archives note, for example, how the early team constantly grappled with checking its own power as a global outsider against its potential influence as a local insider. Memos are punctuated with reflections on the privilege of volunteering for a short period versus the imperative of living through a prolonged and dirty civil war: ‘Unlike most Guatemalans, PBI volunteers live in this real-life nightmare by choice’ (Scott, 1987). And training programmes were reformulated to address the potential risks of such power imbalances among global volunteers in the local field. One manual asks trainees to reflect on the following:

Furthermore, the domestication of a global into a global–local field poses challenges for assessing how effective such field-weaving-based mobilisation can be. Guatemala, like most other country-specific programmes run by PBI, is marked by entrenched conflicts due to which social change is slow-going. Assessments of the effectiveness of non-violent over violent resistance tend to focus on the late stage of success, centring on large-scale campaigns. This requires the fomentation of a mass movement, a mobilised critical mass that can withdraw all support from oppressive regimes. Organisations such as PBI work in earlier stages of mobilisation, the earliest in contexts like 1980s Guatemala, where repression is high and democratic openings rhetorical at best. Their objective is to build mobilising spaces. This means their mobilising ‘power’ is both deeply discursive, with the aim towards structural institutionalisation, and synaptic, in making the relational connections that can spark the beginnings of indigenous organisational structures – wiped out or dormant – this time anchored in a global–local field. ‘For the briefest of times – a few months, perhaps a year – PBI members know they are using to the utmost their first-world power and privilege to protect others instead of exploit them’ (Scott, 1987).

On the other hand, early-stage involvement could create a path dependency for mobilisation dynamics so that local organisations orient their efforts towards particular networks, which might in turn constrain movement development. Of the one million dollars invested in Truth Commission reports, for example, 90% of the funding came from the international community and 1% from the Guatemalan state; and eventually after tens of thousands of cases were documented, the project fizzled out for lack of sufficient funding (PBI, 1998, p. 7). Other activists would have preferred for such money to be invested in development projects.⁷

Here I have explored just one case in which an individual organisation has worked to facilitate the grass-roots development of non-violent resistance in Guatemala. I focused on early-stage efforts to nurture the resurgence and development of a local movement during a period of high repression and violence. The idiosyncrasies of how global–local fields are woven into different contexts require closer attention to these distinctive fields. How this particular organisation has grown over more than 30 years in operation cannot be inferred from my limited analysis of the earliest years in its first field project. What we should understand, however, in considering the wider landscape of organisations such as PBI, is that they have helped to grow global–local fields in conflict zones throughout the world, as they have also become a meaningful part of these fields’ ongoing development.

My study reveals how some of the mechanisms of a new protest field are established in concentrated efforts to weave together global and local initiatives for expanding human rights. Where the domestication framework has largely elaborated on how states implement globally derived policies into local laws, my study turns a global–local field lens towards the global mobilisation of grass-roots non-violence. I explain how global activists for Gandhian non-violence ‘make new spaces for democracy’ at the local level through imparting new understandings of social problems; I have explicated how local-global citizens’ understanding and orientation towards their entitlements have been transformed; and I have explored the institutionalisation of new, superior ways for realising those entitlements in repressive states. In so doing, I show that global–local resistance traverses the top-down or bottom-up divide and moves beyond diffusion efforts. These transnational mobilisation activities instead come to constitute a complex interaction among players working towards societal transformation, however variable their understandings and their theorisation of this transformative project.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.