GLOBAL ANARCHISMS: NO GODS, NO MASTERS, NO PERIPHERIES Cornell University, 22/09/12 http://www.icm.arts.cornell.edu/conference_2012.html
2nd ASN Conference: “Making Connections”
Loughborough University, U.K.
3-5 September 2012
Welcome to the Anarchist Studies Network website
This is the official website for the Anarchist Studies Network a Political Studies Association (UK), Specialist Group for the Study of Anarchism.
To join this group, and to be signed up to the group's email list, please contact the membership secretary Benjamin Franks: benjamin.franks@ glasgow.ac.uk.
ASN members receive a £5 discount on Anarchist Studies. Just ask Benjamin for more details.
2nd Anarchist Studies Network Conference to be held at Loughborough University from the 3-5 of September 2012
Closing Date For Abstracts HAS BEEN EXTENDED TO 1ST OF MAY, 2012
Registration details and conference updates here.
We live in interesting times. The Arab Spring, Occupy X and anti-austerity protests are only the latest and most visible examples in a long tradition of grassroots social movements in which ordinary people create democratic alternatives to hierarchy and inequality. Here and everywhere, people are getting together and making connections between their own everyday experiences and wider patterns of relationships and power, official and unofficial. They (or we) are making connections with each other, personal and political. New patterns evolve as people experiment with different ways of organising, of relating, of connecting, of thinking. Scholars, artists and activists observe, theorise and participate in various ways, helping to make connections, both in social movements and in the movements of everyday life. Feminists, in particular, have foregrounded intersectional approaches to power, privilege and oppression. Race, class and gender; sexuality, ecology and (dis)ability; age, species and faith -- each of these and more interconnect in numerous ways, both subtle and overt.
The Anarchist Studies Network is hosting a conference to acknowledge, celebrate and deepen these diverse efforts to understand and transform our world, our lives. We want this conference itself to be a space for making connections, both intellectual and personal. It will include a blend of more or less traditional panels, participatory discussions and experiential workshops, extended breaks and social events. This first call is an invitation to propose thematic streams, workshops or panel topics by those who are willing to take a role in organising them. Further calls will invite papers, participation, performance. We're particularly keen to make connections across borders of identities, movements, disciplines and practices. We invite contributions from students, academics and unaffiliated researchers, activists and artists, health practitioners and care workers, trade unionists, community organisers and those without labels. Above all, we would like to nurture a convivial atmosphere in which to make connections with others, explore areas of both overlap and difference, create or simply meet, to learn and to share.
Our intention is for this to be a scholarly conference with a difference. Scholar means both student and teacher. By bringing together a diverse group of participants, who share in common a desire to learn and a commitment to acknowledging and creating alternatives to rigid hierarchies and exploitative relationships, we hope that each of us will have something to offer others and much to learn. The process of organising the conference is decentralised, with the conference initiators welcoming proposals from a diverse range of session organisers covering a wide variety of engaged and engaging topics. We also invite session organisers to consider playful, participatory and/or experimental panel and workshop formats. This might range from a traditional three paper panel followed by a discussion using alternative facilitation techniques (e.g., open space technology, fishbowl, or sitting in a circle with a facilitator) to more interactive workshop-style discussion or experiential sessions. Our intention is not to be transgressive for the sake of it, but to encourage a variety of methods in order to facilitate making connections.
Full details of costs and accommodation options will be published here soon.
18 Panel Streams Now Accepting Paper Proposals!! More to be added soon...
‘No Master But God’? Exploring the Compatibility of Anarchism and Religion. Convener: Alex Christoyannopoulos
Anarchism and Non-Domination. Convener: Alex Prichard
A workshop on workable anti-work utopias (working title). Convener: Peter Seyferth
Anarchism in different national contexts. Convener: Mari Kuukkanen
Anarchism and other animals - making connections across species boundaries. Conveners: Erika Cudworth and Richard White
Connecting Anarchism and Critical Management and Organisation Studies. Conveners: Thomas Swann and Konstantin Stoborod
Anarchism & Autonomism. Convener: Stevphen Shukaitis
Real Democracy and the Revolutions of our Time. Conveners: Laurence Davis and Peter Snowdon
Anarchism and War. Convener: Pietro di Paola
On Violence. Convener: Mohamed Veneuse
Anarchism and Education. Convener: Peter Jandric
Re-imagining Anarchism in America: A Critical Perspective. Convener: Jorell Meléndez
Anarchism and Disability. Conveners: Steve Graby, Anat Greenstein, Jess Bradley
Is anarchism Western?: Anarchism and its challenges in a (post)colonial world. Convener: Gabriel Kuhn
Ontological Anarchism. Convener: Peter Hardy
Anarchist Publishing. Convener: Jason Lindsey
MethodBox Workshop. Conveners: Eleni Froudaraki and Isidora Ilic
'A thousand lines of flight': Post-anarchism and Contemporary Art Conveners: Gillian Whiteley, Kuba Szreder
Other Sessions Confirmed
‘Let’s Build it Together’: A Workshop on Protest Camps and Autonomous Politics Session Organisers: Anna Feigenbaum and Fabian Frenzel www.protestcamps.org
Bodily Anarchy. Facilitator: Jamie Heckert
What now for workplace organising: Contemporary wobbly experiences. Convener, David Bailey
Nothing here that takes your fancy? Contact Chris Rossdale with your paper proposal for the open stream(C.Rossdale @ warwick.ac.uk).
We are delighted to announce the first title in the new peer-reviewed book series Contemporary Anarchist Studies, published by Continuum Books.
Anarchism and Political Modernity by Nathan Jun is the first offering in the series. This original work looks at the place of “classical anarchism” in postmodern political discourse, claiming that anarchism presents a vision of political postmodernity. The book seeks to foster a better understanding of why and how anarchism is growing in the present. To do so, it first looks at its origins and history, offering a different view from the two traditions that characterize modern political theory: socialism and liberalism. Such an examination leads to a better understanding of how anarchism connects with newer political trends and why it is a powerful force in contemporary social and political movements.
This first volume in the Contemporary Anarchist Studies series offers a novel philosophical engagement with anarchism and contests a number of positions established in postanarchist theory. Its new approach makes a valuable contribution to an established debate about anarchism and political theory. It offers a new perspective on the emerging area of anarchist studies that will be of interest to activists, students and theorists.
Advance praise for Anarchism and Political Modernity
20% discount flyers for this title are available here in GBP, Euros and USD.
Over the coming years, the 'Contemporary Anarchist Studies' will be publishing the best new scholarship on anarchist politics and history, bridging theory and practice, academia and activism. Each title will be published under the 'Creative Commons' licence, and will also be distributed by AK Press.
Further titles slated for publication in the series include:
John Rapp, Daoism and Anarchism in Ancient and Modern China
Laura Portwood-Stacer, Everyday Politics: Lifestyle as Radical Activism
Magda Egoumenides, Critical Philosophical Anarchism
Jason Lindsey, The Concealment of the State
Kristian Williams, The Anarchist Philosophy of Oscar Wilde
Peter Ryley, Making Another World Possible: Anarchism, Anti-capitalism and Ecology in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Britain.
If you have an idea for a title, please feel free to contact the series editors with a completed Author Submission Form.
Anarchism and Moral Philosophy by Benjamin Franks and Matthew Wilson
This ground-breaking collection of anarchist philosophy is now available from Palgrave
Post-Anarchism: A Reader by Duane Rousselle and Süreyyya Evren
Bringing together both previously published key texts and new material exploring the overlaps and affinities between anarchism, poststructuralism and postmodernism, this collection is now available from Pluto
Anarchism & Sexuality: Ethics, Relationships & Power by Jamie Heckert and Richard Cleminson
Now available from Routledge.
Anarchist Studies Initiative, SUNY Cortland
The Anarchist Studies Initiative at SUNY Cortland is the first center dedicated to the study of anarchism in higher education. Anarchist Studies Initiative comes out of SUNY Cortland’s commitment to cutting edge innovative liberal arts and professional public education.
Anarchist Research Group, Loughborough University
The ARG is based in the Department of Politics, History and International Relations at Loughborough University. Its aims are:
To facilitate the study of anarchism across scholarly disciplines in the University To help raise the profile of anarchist studies in the wider academic community To promote international collaborative work on anarchism To provide a centre for postgraduate researchers working on aspects of anarchist history and politics To encourage the exploration and analysis of anarchist ideas and practices in the local community
What constitutes "anarchist studies," and where did it come from?
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and with it, of an entire world order based on the tension between American and Soviet power, a number of intellectuals announced (once again) that the age of "ideologies" had ended; liberal democracy and capitalism had won, and no other political or economic options remained credible as contenders for the future. Energy had drained from most of the "New Social Movements" that had come to such prominence in the sixties and seventies; having since been institutionalized, accommodated within the system, environmentalism and the various forms of "identity politics" were no longer to be seen as radical challenges to the status quo, much less as forming part of a revolutionary "Movement."
Two decades later, this cozy perception of the world is in shambles. Nearly a third of the world's population lives in "failed states"; international systems of law and order are in serious disarray; strains on the planetary ecosystem are increasingly hard to ignore; the global marketplace lurches between "irrational exuberance" and crisis. The institutional managers of this world order now cannot meet without major police and military protection; everywhere they go, angry crowds appear. Many in these crowds speak not of a Movement, but of a "movement of movements," that cannot be accommodated within the present order. It has become a common observation that, notwithstanding the novelty of this force, it cannot be understood without reference to another, older political tradition, one that had gone into an historical eclipse around the time of the Russian Revolution and the first victories of the women's suffrage movement, that had long since become something less than a memory, a mere epithet: anarchism.
It is deeply ironic that there are now arguably more people outside of the academy than inside it who possess any intellectual context for this tradition; one is hard pressed to find a few scattered, often uninformed references to anarchism in the most advanced realms of scholarly discourse. Nonetheless, over the last two decades, academics have slowly begun to rediscover the historical significance of anarchism, which, as Benedict Anderson recently had to remind his fellow historians, was for a time "the main vehicle of global opposition to industrial capitalism, autocracy, latifundism, and imperialism." Scholars have started to study the influence of anarchism on early Korean and Filipino national liberation struggles, movements for birth control from Barcelona to Boston, Latin American labor history, Jewish immigrant life, the development of modern sociology and geography, the French Resistance, debates over eugenics and Social Darwinism, modern art and Modern Schools, avant-garde film and popular music, revolutions from Mexico to China to Russia itself.
There has even been some interest in revisiting the theoretical documents left in the wake of anarchist movements, dusting off the old ideas in search of new perspectives. Far from having been anti-intellectual "primitive rebels," anarchists produced a rich critical discourse on every facet of life and knowledge, from economics to linguistics, from social history to aesthetic theory, from urban planning to ontology -- a counter-institutional archive that has barely begun to be investigated. Amid a widespread increase in doctoral theses and academic publications directly engaged with the anarchist archive, some researchers have begun to draw inspiration from it, to see their work as an extension of anarchist theory and practice. For a number of us, what we are calling "anarchist studies" no longer necessarily takes anarchism as its object of study but as a standpoint from which to study the world. Anarchist contributions to thought are making a reappearance in a number of fields, challenging established orthodoxies. Perhaps, against all odds, we are witnessing the emergence of a new anarchist paradigm in academia.
more: About Us
The research network is formally affiliated to Anarchist Studies.
Anarchist Studies is an inter-disciplinary journal of scholarly research into the history, culture and theory of anarchism, edited by Ruth Kinna at Loughborough University. It publishes papers on three broad themes:
the re-evaluation of the anarchist record, considering issues of culture, philosophy and political action the potential future of anarchism as a current of critical political action the application of anarchist ideas as an instrument of research.
Recent highlights include special issues on sexuality, and on science fiction, and articles on Tolstoy, Daoism, Locke and post-structuralism.
'There has been a remarkable surge of interest in anarchist thought and practice in recent years. Anarchist Studies has played an important part in this revival with serious and constructive inquiries into anarchism's historical experience and animating ideas, and valuable contributions to enriching and deepening them' Noam Chomsky
'Many academic journals are interchangeable, but Anarchist Studies is full of material you will discover nowhere else' Colin Ward "
More details, a full table of contents and a submissions 'style guide' can be found here
The R.A. Forum provides the most comprehensive online bibliography and database of anarchist texts in English, French, Italian and numerous other languages. It is a global portal of the most up-to-date work on anarchism. It also contains regular updates about upcoming events and links to a vast array of information.
The Anarchy Archives is an online encyclopaedia of newly transcribed and scanned documents. An Invaluable source of primary materials.
The Institute for Anarchist Studies is an nonprofit and independent organisation that promotes the re-investigation of anarchism as political and economic praxis. The Institute funds research projects and publishes its own magazine 'Perspectives on Anarchist Theory'.
The Anarchist FAQ is a huge repository of essays, definitions and opinions on everything anarchist. It includes links to hundreds of other websites and has a huge English-language bibliography - all web-based.
AK Press is the world's leading anarchist press. A worker-run cooperative, it has been publishing anarchist writings for years. The website also contains a wealth of material on anarchist writers accross the world. It's British distribution website can be found here.