From local to global: networked activism against multinational extractivism

ABSTRACT This essay analyzes a locally networked resistance movement against the Phulbari Coal Project, an immense open-pit coal mine excavation project initiated by the multinational corporation Asia Energy (U.K.) in Bangladesh. The project was violently brought upon the rural and Indigenous peoples in 2006 but met with a formidable resistance that forced the company to halt the project and leave the country. The success of the protest was amplified by shows of solidarity from international environmental justice movements. We argue that the mobilization of movements and protests like this signify a global arcade of networked activism against transnational and geomorphic extractivism. Drawing from interviews and qualitative digital media content analysis, we identify common themes, similarities with global appeals and vocabularies, and the communicative architecture of the movements, including their digital turn. We pay attention to how local voices were picked up by national and transnational alliances. Although deeply situated in local cultures, the Phulbari movement shows that antiextractivism has become a digitally networked and globally circulated cause.