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2 Anarchists as individuals: a micro-structural analysis How can a rational being be ennobled by anything that is not obtained by its own exertions? (Mary Wollstonecraft)1 Anarchists are people – but what kinds of people? Social movements must be composed of individuals. But what kinds of individuals? Anarchist movements are so called not only because of who they involve, but also in spite of those individuals’ characteristics. Key concerns for movement scholars are how participants identify socially and politically, what the movements’ class composition are
A King who tells the sea: ‘until here and no further!’ He shall rule as King! A king who comes from a putrid drop and ends up in the grave, why should he rule as king? (Eleazar Kallir) In one of his lesser-known autobiographical vignettes, Tate Vert an Anarkhist (Daddy Becomes an Anarchist), Isaac
2 Jonathan Purkis Towards an anarchist sociology1 A serious scholar is one who takes the Pope at his word and discounts the words of rebels. A ranter is one who takes rebels at their word and discounts every word of the Pope. (Fredy Perlman, 1983: 183) Objectivism and relativism not only are untenable as philosophies, they are bad guides for fruitful cultural collaboration. (Paul Feyerabend, 1995: 152) Introduction The ‘politics’ of knowledge has long been a concern of the humanities and social sciences. The decisions taken about which areas of society are
9 Karen Goaman The anarchist travelling circus: reflections on contemporary anarchism, anti-capitalism and the international scene Introduction The phrase ‘anarchist travelling circus’ was uttered in stern tones by Tony Blair, as, after the European Union summit in Gothenburg, Sweden, in June 2001, he condemned the protests that have converged on every significant such gathering over the last few years. The unintentional note of joyfulness, play and spontaneity captured by this phrase was quickly recuperated by the movement itself, appearing on a banner, and
7 Social capital in anarchist movements Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I’m going to go fulfill my proper function in the social organism. I’m going to go unbuild walls. (Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed) Social capital and Bourdieu “Anarchists of the world … unite!” This tongue-in-cheek joke reflects the commonly held belief that anarchists do not work well with others. Most people assume that anarchists are extreme individualists, unwilling to compromise, or collaborate in groups (i.e., every person is “an island,” completely independent of
Rousseau’s The Dream (1910) as symbolic of mutualism, animal–human interactions, anti-capitalism and opposition to modernity’s violence, as ‘integral, interdependent parts of the same life force having long evolved from the same rudimentary species’. 1 Brauer situates the painter’s concerns alongside the radical anarchist thinkers Élisée Reclus and Kropotkin proposing that the subjects in Rousseau’s work are ‘[m]utually aiding one another, sharing the fruit of nature rather than hoarding it or fighting over it, as illustrated by Exotic Landscape , they [the monkeys
7 Towards an anarchist “right to the city” I participated in my first major protest in 2001, shortly after the United States military started the invasion of Afghanistan. In the days before the invasion started, activist groups all over the city of Des Moines were meeting, coordinating, and planning. Groups organized their own actions, but collectively we were going to take the streets of downtown Des Moines. We planned to show the power of the people and voice our massive opposition to the death machine being put in motion by George W. Bush, Cheney, and their
3 Anarchists of the world, unite! A meso-structural analysis The need for organization in social life – even the symphony between organization and society, I would be tempted to say – is so self-evident that it is mind-boggling that it could ever have been questioned. (Errico Malatesta) Anarchism in organizations Despite jokes about “organized anarchists as oxymoronic,” anarchists clearly self-organize and belong to organizations. Yet, sociological research has not comprehensively assessed the factors that influence where anarchism thrives and its particular
7 The French anarchist movement and the First World War Constance Bantman and David Berry As one of the anarchist anti-militarist and anti-patriotic heartlands of the Western world, the French anarchist movement found itself in the eye of the storm at the outbreak of the First World War, famously rallying to the war effort – albeit neither unanimously nor unwaveringly – within just ten days of the declaration of war. This chapter examines the events and debates leading up to the interventionist 1916 Manifesto of the Sixteen (nine of whose original fifteen
9 The anarchist anti-conscription movement in the USA Kathy E. Ferguson This chapter explores the conceptual logic and political strategies of the anarchist anti-conscription movement in the USA before and during the First World War. Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, Leonard Abbott, Rose Abbott, Stella (Cominsky) Ballantine and Eleanor (Fitzie) Fitzgerald, to name only a few, were actively involved in the Anti-Militarist League and later in the No-Conscription League and the League for the Amnesty of Political Prisoners. They forged an impressive alliance with