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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political ideologies > Anarchism
In the wake of the new far-right populisms, the fragmentation of
global narratives of progress, and the dismantling of economic
globalization, there are signs that neoliberalism is beginning to
enter its death throes or at least starting to fundamentally
mutate. This provides us with a roughly fifty-year cycle with which
to re-assess the rise and potential fall of neoliberalism. Using
1968 as one of the inaugural moments of this history, this
interdisciplinary collection seeks to reassess the significance and
legacy of the global 1968 uprisings from today's vantage point.
While these uprisings arguably helped bring an end to a number of
forms of oppression, the period following them also saw the
re-entrenchment of class power to a level not seen since the 1920s.
Without drawing any simple or direct lines of causation, the
sequence of the past fifty years reflects what could be termed a
double bind or "lose-lose" scenario. Yet, particularly given the
present-day indicators of a crisis of neoliberal hegemony, this
volume argues that returning to 1968 today may offer critical and
comparative resources for thinking a way out of our current
impasse.
Considering solidarity and mutual aid at the intersection of
political philosophy and biology, made more urgent and prescient by
the COVID-19 crisis, this book is grounded in the work of Catherine
Malabou and takes her theories in creative new directions. To think
about solidarity mutual aid is to think about how we can and do
live together, and how we might do so differently. Mutual aid is,
in Peter Kropotkin's famous formulation, a factor of evolution, but
also a conscious political strategy undertaken by activists in
times of crisis. While this combination of biology and politics has
been a source of controversy, and even embarrassment, recent
developments demand a rethink. The contributions in this volume aim
to renew interest in the idea of mutual aid, and to consider how
biological claims might be incorporated into political projects
without appearing as essentialist constraints. They do so in
dialogue with Catherine Malabou, whose work insists on the
importance of the biological while rejecting any notions of
biological determinism. They thus point to the necessity of
solidarity and mutual aid for understanding our social life, while
releasing them from the biological and symbolic chains in which
they often appear.
Caritina Pina Montalvo personified the vital role played by Mexican
women in the anarcho-syndicalist movement. Sonia Hernandez tells
the story of how Pina and other Mexicanas in the Gulf of Mexico
region fought for labor rights both locally and abroad in service
to the anarchist ideal of a worldwide community of workers. An
international labor broker, Pina never left her native Tamaulipas.
Yet she excelled in connecting groups in the United States and
Mexico. Her story explains the conditions that led to
anarcho-syndicalism's rise as a tool to achieve labor and gender
equity. It also reveals how women's ideas and expressions of
feminist beliefs informed their experiences as leaders in and
members of the labor movement. A vivid look at a radical activist
and her times, For a Just and Better World illuminates the lives
and work of Mexican women battling for labor rights and gender
equality in the early twentieth century.
Other Worlds Here: Honoring Native Women's Writing in Contemporary
Anarchist Movements examines the interaction of literature and
radical social movement, exploring the limitations of contemporary
anarchist politics through attentive engagement with Native women's
literatures. Tracing the rise of New Anarchism in the United States
following protests against the World Trade Organization in 1999,
interdisciplinary scholar Theresa Warburton argues that
contemporary anarchist politics have not adequately accounted for
the particularities of radical social movement in a settler
colonial society. As a result, activists have replicated the
structure of settlement within anarchist spaces. All is not lost,
however. Rather than centering a critical indictment of
contemporary anarchist politics, Other Worlds Here maintains that a
defining characteristic of New Anarchism is its ability to adapt
and transform. Through close readings of texts by Native women
authors, Warburton argues that anarchists must shift the paradigm
that another world is possible to one that recognizes other worlds
already here: stories, networks, and histories that lay out methods
of building reciprocal relationships with the land and its people.
Analyzing memoirs, poetry, and novels by writers including Deborah
Miranda, Elissa Washuta, Heid E. Erdrich, Janet Rogers, and Leslie
Marmon Silko, Other Worlds Here extends the study of Native women's
literatures beyond ethnographic analysis of Native experience to
advance a widely applicable, contemporary political critique.
A study of communities in the Horn of Africa where reciprocity is a
dominant social principle, offering a concrete countermodel to the
hierarchical state. Over the course of history, people have
developed many varieties of communal life; the state, with its
hierarchical structure, is only one of the possibilities for
society. In this book, leading anthropologist Hermann Amborn
identifies a countermodel to the state, describing communities
where reciprocity is a dominant social principle and where
egalitarianism is a matter of course. He pays particular attention
to such communities in the Horn of Africa, where nonhierarchical,
nonstate societies exist within the borders of a hierarchical
structured state. This form of community, Amborn shows, is not a
historical forerunner to monarchy or the primitive state, nor is it
obsolete as a social model. These communities offer a concrete
counterexample to societies with strict hierarchical structures.
Amborn investigates social forms of expression, ideas, practices,
and institutions that oppose the hegemony of one group over
another, exploring how conceptions of values and laws counteract
tendencies toward the accumulation of power. He examines not only
how the nonhegemonic ethos is reflected in law but also how
anarchic social formations can exist. In the Horn of Africa, the
autonomous jurisdiction of these societies protects against
destructive outside influences, offers a counterweight to hegemonic
violence, and contributes to the stabilization of communal life. In
an era of widespread dissatisfaction with Western political
systems, Amborn's study offers an opportunity to shift from
traditional theories of anarchism and nonhegemony that project a
stateless society to consider instead stateless societies already
in operation.
Other Worlds Here: Honoring Native Women’s Writing in
Contemporary Anarchist Movements examines the interaction of
literature and radical social movement, exploring the limitations
of contemporary anarchist politics through attentive engagement
with Native women’s literatures. Tracing the rise of New
Anarchism in the United States following protests against the World
Trade Organization in 1999, interdisciplinary scholar Theresa
Warburton argues that contemporary anarchist politics have not
adequately accounted for the particularities of radical social
movement in a settler colonial society. As a result, activists have
replicated the structure of settlement within anarchist spaces.
 All is not lost, however. Rather than centering a critical
indictment of contemporary anarchist politics, Other Worlds Here
maintains that a defining characteristic of New Anarchism is its
ability to adapt and transform. Through close readings of texts by
Native women authors, Warburton argues that anarchists must shift
the paradigm that another world is possible to one that recognizes
other worlds already here: stories, networks, and histories that
lay out methods of building reciprocal relationships with the land
and its people. Analyzing memoirs, poetry, and novels by writers
including Deborah Miranda, Elissa Washuta, Heid E. Erdrich, Janet
Rogers, and Leslie Marmon Silko, Other Worlds Here extends the
study of Native women’s literatures beyond ethnographic analysis
of Native experience to advance a widely applicable, contemporary
political critique.
What are the core features of an anarchist ethics? Why do some
anarchisms identify themselves as anti-moral or amoral? And what
are the practical outcomes of ethical analysis for anarchist and
post-anarchist practice? This book shows how we can identify and
evaluate different forms of anarchism through their ethical
principles, and we can identify these ethics in the evolving
anarchist organizations, tactics and forms of critique. The book
outlines the various key anarchist positions, explaining how the
identification of their ethical positions provides a substantive
basis to classify rival traditions of thought. It describes the
different ideological structures of anarchism in terms of their
conceptual organization integrated into their main material
practices, highlighting that there is no singular anarchism. It
goes on to assess distinctive approaches for identifying and
categorizing anarchism, and argues that it is best viewed not as a
movement that prioritizes rights and liberal accounts of autonomy,
or that prescribes specific revolutionary goals, but as a way to
challenge hierarchies of power in the generation of social goods.
Finally, the book uses case studies from contemporary issues in
educational practice and pertinent political conflicts to
demonstrate the practical applicability of a virtue approaches to
anarchism.
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