manifest itself through its own products, but rather through its ways of using the products imposed by a dominant economic order.”8 Nowadays we live in a system which seems almost monolithic, with capitalism being the only successful economic model: it is a globalised market where individuals all over the world are under the same strategic pressure by multinational corporations. Recently, Copenhagen Climate Change Conference showed that the political powers are (still?) too weak to control such pressure - sustainable long-term policies had to retreat in front of short-term economic agendas. If, according to Certeau, “the weaker the forces at the disposition of the strategist, (…) the more the strategy is transformed into tactics,”9 anti-corporatist forces necessarily have to move through tactical paths. The no-global movement seems to understand this point very well. It lacks a clear hierarchy, it does not always have a clear unified position, it does not have a scheduled agenda, but thanks to its flexibility it is able to move within the system and reassess its goals constantly. A new political idea primarily needs visibility to spread around the public opinion. The no-global movement found two different canals of communication: the internal, using what Naomi Klein calls “the anarchic pathways of the Internet”10 and the external, sneaking into the official media. The Internet made possible its beginning, in 1999, when 50.000 people unexpectedly gathered up in Seattle during a World Trade Organization forum to protest against the role of the corporations in the exploitations of developing countries. Then, during a decade, the movement took advantage of the presence of the media in official summits (WTO, FMI, World Bank, G-8…) to appear on the first pages of the newspapers and the TV news. Through its gained visibility, the primary objective of a greater public consciousness about globalisation and its side effects has been achieved. A more ambitious step should come now. That would be to enter the mechanisms of the political power to be able to influence its social and economic policies. On the macro scale the no-global movement already found some receptive audience: countries like Brazil, for instance, have already included a considerable part of its programmatic points in their governmental agenda and sponsored them internationally through the G-20 summit. Nevertheless, I think that far greater results would be achieved if the movement were able to diffusely influence the micro scale of the urban processes, where all the implications of globalisation enter our everyday life. This is the field where the no-global movement and Landscape Urbanism meet: the social and environmental issues of the no-global movement can be brought up to the practice of urban design through the discipline of Landscape Urbanism.
Resistance “A tactic is an art of the weak”11 and the weak by definition does not benefit from the established power. This condition, though, can lead to very different degrees of resistance. At the same time tactics are just one possible way of implementing such resistance, whenever it takes place. The weak can either limit himself to a mere survival, or try to improve his conditions. In the first case he will develop just a passive resistance to cope with the hardship of his daily life; in the second case his effort will be put in a longer-term struggle to either subvert the system or become an influent part of it. A crucial point about tactic is that is does not aim to sabotage and take over; instead it tries to influence the power in such a way as to fulfil its needs, behind an appearance of conformity.12 Therefore tactical resistance occurs only in the latter situation, 8 De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, pp. XII-XIII 9 De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, p. 37 10 Klein, Rebels in Search of Rules 11 De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, p. 37 12 De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, p. 39 120