Constructive Anarchy, the result of more than a decade of direct study within a variety of anarchist projects, provides the most wide-ranging and detailed analysis of current anarchist endeavours. The compelling discussions of anarchism and union organising, anti-poverty work and immigrant and refugee defence represent truly groundbreaking undertakings from a rising scholar of contemporary anarchism. Organised to illustrate the development of the diversity of anarchist strategies and tactics over time, the book begins with a discussion of alternative media projects before turning attention to anarchist involvement in broader community-based movements. Case studies include a discussion of anarchists and rank-and-file workplace organising, anarchist anti-borders struggles and "No One Is Illegal" movements in defence of immigrants and refugees since 9/11, and anarchist free schools and community centres. Jeff Shantz's analysis demonstrates serious and grounded practices rooted in anarchist organising: practices that may draw on previous traditions and practices but also innovate and experiment. The varied selection of case studies allows the author to compare groups that are geared primarily towards anarchist and radical subcultures with anarchist involvement in more diverse community-based coalitions, an approach that is otherwise lacking in the literature on contemporary anarchism.

This volume examines historical and contemporary engagements of anarchism and literary production. Anarchists have used literary production to express opposition to values and relations characterizing advanced capitalist (and socialist) societies while also expressing key aspects of the alternative values and institutions proposed within anarchism. Among favoured themes are anarchist critiques of corporatization, prisons and patriarchal relations as well as explorations of developing anarchist perspectives on revolution, ecology, polysexuality and mutual aid.A key component of anarchist perspectives is the belief that means and ends must correspond. Thus in anarchist literature as in anarchist politics, a radical approach to form is as important as content. Anarchist literature joins other critical approaches to creative production in attempting to break down divisions between readers and writer, audience and artist, encouraging all to become active participants in the creative process. Dr Shantz teaches at the Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Vancouver, BC.

It is widely understood that the burdens of ecological destruction are borne disproportionately by working-class and poor communities, both through illness and disease caused by pollutants and through the depletion of natural resources from which they make a living. Yet, consistently, the voices of the working class are the most marginalized, excluded, and silenced when discussing how to address ecological concerns and protect the environment from future destruction. Both mainstream environmental groups, such as the Sierra Club and Greenpeace, and radical environmentalists, such as EarthFirst!, are reluctant to engage with working-class and poor communities, often viewing blue-collar workers as responsible for the destruction these groups are trying to prevent. In Green Syndicalism, Shantz issues a call to action to the environmental movement and labor activists, particularly rank and file workers, to join forces in a common struggle to protect the environment from capitalism, corporate greed, and the extraction of resources. He argues for a major transformation to address the ""jobs versus the environment"" rhetoric that divides these two groups along lines of race and class. Combining practical initiatives and theoretical perspectives, Shantz offers an approach that brings together radical ecology and revolutionary unionism in a promising vision of green politics. Green syndicalists work as coalitions to increase community-based economics and productive decision making that encourages the participation of all stakeholders in the process. Drawing, in part, on his own experiences growing up in a working-class family and organizing within radical ecology and labor movements, Shantz charts a path that accesses the commonalities between these groups in an effort to take on the forces that destroy the environment, exploit people, and harm their communities.

Radical Criminology, edited by Jeff Shantz Kwantlen Polytecnic University, Vancouver, British Columbia], is dedicated to bridging the gap between the academy and the global activist community, especially with regard to state violence, state-corporate crime, the growth of surveillance regimes, and the prison-industrial complex. More pointedly, the journal aims to be not simply a project of critique, but is also geared toward a praxis of struggle, insurgence, and practical resistance. Issue 3 (Winter 2014) includes: EDITORIAL / Jeff Shantz, "Neither Justice nor Crime (We Are All Criminals Now)" -- FEATURES/Nicholas Chagnon, "Heinous Crime or Acceptable Violence? The Disparate Framing of Femicides in Hawai'ii -- Tage Alalehto, "Ivar Kreuger: An International Swindler of Magnitude" -- ARTS/"Art Against Extraction Industries, feat. cover artist Fanny Aishaa, + Likhts'amisyu hereditary chief Toghestiy, Gord Hill +more" -- INSURGENCIES/Christopher Petrella, "The Color of Corporate Corrections, Part II: Contractual Exemptions and the Overrepresentation of People of Color in Private Prisons" -- Aiyana Ormond, "Jaywalking to Jail: Capitalism, mass incarceration and social control on the streets of Vancouver" -- Vicki Chartrand, "Tears 4 Justice and the Missing and Murdered Women and Children Across Canada: An Interview with Gladys Radek" -- BOOK REVIEWS/"Drawing the Line Once Again" (by Paul Goodman), reviewed by Jeff Shantz

Radical Criminology, edited by Jeff Shantz Kwantlen Polytecnic University, Vancouver, British Columbia], is dedicated to bridging the gap between the academy and the global activist community, especially with regard to state violence, state-corporate crime, the growth of surveillance regimes, and the prison-industrial complex. More pointedly, the journal aims to be not simply a project of critique, but is also geared toward a praxis of struggle, insurgence, and practical resistance. Issue 2 includes: EDITORIAL/Jeff Shantz, "In Defense of Radicalism" -- FEATURES/Michael Loadenthal, "The Earth Liberation Front" -- Angie Ng, "Fighting Inequality in Hong Kong: Lessons Learned from Occupy Hong Kong" -- ARTS/pj lilley, "Art Through a Birch Bark Heart: An Illustrated Interview with Erin Marie Konsmo" -- "Profiles: Families of Sisters in Spirit & Native Youth Sexual Health Network" -- Marc James Leger, "Globalization and the Politics of Culture: An Interview with Imre Szeman" -- INSURGENCIES/Ivan Greenberg, "Everyone is a Terrorist Now: Marginalizing Protest in the U.S." -- Christopher Petrella and Josh Begley, "The Color of Corporate Corrections: The Overrepresentation of People of Color in the For-Profit Corrections Industry" -- BOOK REVIEWS/"The Criminal's Handbook: A Practical Guide to Surviving Arrest in Canada" (C.W. Michael), reviewed by Tom C. Allen -- "The Anti-Capitalist Resistance Comic Book" (Gord Hill), reviewed by Mike Larsen -- "State Power and Democracy: Before and During the Presidency of George W. Bush" (Andrew Kolin), reviewed by G.G. Preparata -- "Defying the Tomb" (Kevin "Rashid" Johnson), reviewed by Jeff Shantz

As capitalist societies in the twenty-first century move from crisis to crisis, oppositional movements in the global North have been somewhat stymied, confronted with the pressing need to develop organizational infrastructures that might prepare the ground for a real, and durable, alternative. More and more, the need to develop shared infrastructural resources - what Shantz terms "infrastructures of resistance" - becomes apparent. Ecological disaster, economic crisis, political austerity, and mass-produced fear and phobia all require organizational preparation - the common building of real world alternatives. There is, as necessary as ever, a need to think through what we, as non-elites, exploited, and oppressed, want and how we might get it. There is an urgency to pursue constructive approaches to meet common needs. For many, the constructive vision and practice for meeting social needs (individual and collective) is expressed as commonism - an aspiration of mutual aid, sharing, and common good or common wealth collectively determined. The term commonsim is a useful way to discuss the goals and aspirations of oppositional movements, because it returns to social struggle the emphasis on commonality - a common wealth - that has been lost in the histories of previous movements that subsumed the commons within mechanisms of state control, regulation, and accounting - namely communism. In the current context, commonism, and the desire for commons, speaks to collective expressions against enclosure, now instituted as privatization, in various realms. While the central feature of capitalism is the commodity - a collectively produced good controlled for sale by private entities claiming ownership - the central feature of post-capitalist societies is the commons. These counter-forces have always been in conflict throughout the history of capitalism's imposition. And this conflict has been engaged in the various spheres of human life, as mentioned above. Commonism, (and commonist struggles), is expressed in intersections of sites of human activity and sustenance: ecological, social, and ideational. Examples of ecological commonism include conservation efforts, indigenous land reclamations and re-occupations (and blockades of development), and community gardens, to name only a few. Social commons include childcare networks, food and housing shares, factory occupations, and solidarity economics (including but not limited to community cooperatives). Ideational commons include creative commons, opens source software, and data liberation (such as Anonymous and Wikileaks). This becomes procreative or constructive. It provides a spreading base for eco-social development beyond state capitalist control. It also moves movements from momentary spectacles or defensive stances or reactive "fightbacks." Commonism affirms and asserts different ways of doing things, of living, of interacting. This book engages various commonist tendencies. It examines communism, including overlooked or forgotten tendencies. It provides an exploration of primitive accumulation and mutual aid as elements of struggle. Attention is given to constructive aspects of commonist politics from self-valorization against capital to gift economies against the market. It finally speaks to the need of movements to build infrastructures of resistance that sustain struggles for the commons. Written by a longtime activist/scholar, this is a work that will be of interest to community organizers and activists as well as students of social movements, social change, and radical politics. It will be taken up by people directly involved in specific community movements as well as students in a range of disciplines (including sociology, politics, geography, anthropology, cultural studies, and social policy). There is no book that offers such a concise, readable discussion of the issues in the current context, with particular emphasis on anarchist intersections with communism.

Radical Criminology, edited by Jeff Shantz Kwantlen Polytecnic University, Vancouver, British Columbia], is dedicated to bridging the gap between the academy and the global activist community, especially with regard to state violence, state-corporate crime, the growth of surveillance regimes, and the prison-industrial complex. More pointedly, the journal aims to be not simply a project of critique, but is also geared toward a praxis of struggle, insurgence, and practical resistance. Issue 1 includes: EDITORIAL: Radical Criminology: A Manifesto; FEATURES: Security Assemblages and Spaces of Exception: The Production of (Para-)Militarized Spaces in the U.S. War on Drugs by Markus Kienscherf; Contesting the 'Justice Campus': Abolitionist Resistance to Liberal Carceral Expansion by Judah Schept; Cooperation versus Competition in Nature and Society: The Contribution of Piotr Kropotkin to Evolution Theory by Urbano Fra Paleo; ART: We are coming . . . strong . . . unstoppable: A Global Balkans Interview with Belgrade Artist Milica Ruzicic; + Zrenjanin, Jugoremedija, 2004 (a note on the cover painting); Series of paintings on police brutality by Milica Ruzicic; INSURGENCIES: Repression, Resistance, and the Neocolonial Prison Nation: Notes on the 2010 Struggle of the California Prisoners' Hunger Strike by K. Kersplebedeb; Prison Expansionism, Media, and "Offender Pools" An Abolitionist Perspective on the Criminalization of Minorities in the Canadian Criminal Justice System by Steven Nguyen; BOOK REVIEWS: The Red Army Faction-A Documentary History. Vol. I: Projectiles for the People, by J. Smith and Andre Moncourt (Eds.), reviewed by Guido G. Preparata; Freedom Not Yet: Liberation and the Next World Order, by Kenneth Surin, reviewed by Jeff Shantz

Radical ecology has emerged as a potential point for linkage, or nodal point, of a wide plurality of anti-systemic struggles. Many have long expected that the "nature-society" question will provide the most likely focus for a coalescence of new social movements into a broadened counter-hegemonic movement. However, one problem persists. Ecology as nodal point of solidarity has been marked by conflict. Examining ecology exposes a rather troubled mythopoetic, for which even a tentative fixing of radicalizing struggles has proved difficult. Nature can be articulated to widely ranging interpretations and discourses and can be deployed for vastly different purposes. This provides for the strength of nature as a realm of freedom but paradoxically leaves it open to discourses of unfreedom. This book adapts Georges Sorel's theory of social myths to examine radical ecology as a point of convergence for social movements. In doing so it makes an important contribution to understandings of environmentalism and social movements more broadly. An innovative work it will be of great interest for students of social theory and politics as well as anyone involved in environmental activism.

Fear is a powerful emotion and a formidable spur to action, a source of worry and - when it is manipulated - a source of injustice. Manufacturing Phobias demonstrates how economic and political elites mobilize fears of terrorism, crime, migration, invasion, and infection to twist political and social policy and advance their own agendas. The contributors to the collection, experts in criminology, law, sociology, and politics, explain how and why social phobias are created by pundits, politicians, and the media, and how they target the most vulnerable in our society. Emphasizing how social phobias reflect the interests of those with political, economic, and cultural power, this work challenges the idea that society's anxieties are merely expressions of individual psychology. Manufacturing Phobias will be a clarion call for anyone concerned about the disturbing consequences of our culture of fear.

Capitalism as a global system barely allows the needs of the majority of the world's population to be met. Whether from an industrialized country such as the US or from South Africa, the need for an alternative can be felt all over the world. It is clear nowadays that, due to the non-democratic nature and inadequacies of capitalism, another system must take its place. Such a process has already begun through the cooperative movement, which this book examines along with other initiatives. Featuring essays by international scholars and activists from various spheres of the anti-capitalist left, the work features many examples from the north and the south, to cover both the historically-advanced and late capitalist economies. It discusses such initiatives as participatory economics, the Mondragon experience, worker cooperatives in Europe and Latin America, solidarity economy in South Africa, and more. Written in an accessible manner, "Beyond Capitalism" will be an invaluable resource for any student of social movements and political thought and for anyone looking for alternative to today's ongoing systemic crises.

Contemporary Anarchist Criminology: Against Authoritarianism and Punishment offers a cutting-edge critical assessment of criminology by creating provocative discussions regarding business as usual in the criminal justice system. This exciting interdisciplinary book explores a diversity of topics that range from the construction of criminal law, to Lombroso, to deviant behavior, to prison abolition, to transformative justice, to restorative justice, to environmental justice, and to the prison industrial complex. Contemporary Anarchist Criminology is a must-read book for anyone looking for a serious critique of the criminal justice system, specifically for those in sociology, political science, criminology, peace and conflict studies, and criminal justice. Contemporary Anarchist Criminology is not for the timid, but for those wanting to challenge and dismantle the current forms of domination, oppression, and injustice that frame and define the current system of justice.

Contemporary Anarchist Criminology: Against Authoritarianism and Punishment offers a cutting-edge critical assessment of criminology by creating provocative discussions regarding business as usual in the criminal justice system. This exciting interdisciplinary book explores a diversity of topics that range from the construction of criminal law, to Lombroso, to deviant behavior, to prison abolition, to transformative justice, to restorative justice, to environmental justice, and to the prison industrial complex. Contemporary Anarchist Criminology is a must-read book for anyone looking for a serious critique of the criminal justice system, specifically for those in sociology, political science, criminology, peace and conflict studies, and criminal justice. Contemporary Anarchist Criminology is not for the timid, but for those wanting to challenge and dismantle the current forms of domination, oppression, and injustice that frame and define the current system of justice.

Anarchy and Society constructs possible parameters for a future 'anarchist sociology', by a sociological exposition of major anarchist thinkers as well as an anarchist interrogation of key sociological concepts (including social norms, inequality and social movements). Sociology and anarchism share many common interests including community, solidarity, feminism, crime and restorative justice and social domination. The synthesis proposed by Anarchy and Society is reflexive, critical and strongly anchored in both traditions.

Capitalism as a global system barely allows the needs of the majority of the world's population to be met. Whether from an industrialized country such as the US or from South Africa, the need for an alternative can be felt all over the world. It is clear nowadays that, due to the non-democratic nature and inadequacies of capitalism, another system must take its place. Such a process has already begun through the cooperative movement, which this book examines along with other initiatives. Featuring essays by international scholars and activists from various spheres of the anti-capitalist left, the work features many examples from the north and the south, to cover both the historically-advanced and late capitalist economies. It discusses such initiatives as participatory economics, the Mondragon experience, worker cooperatives in Europe and Latin America, solidarity economy in South Africa, and more. Written in an accessible manner, Beyond Capitalism will be an invaluable resource for any student of social movements and political thought and for anyone looking for alternative to today's ongoing systemic crises.

Anarchism stands as one of the most vital social movements of the twentieth century. Yet this large (and growing) contemporary movement remains obscured by public and scholarly misconceptions as to its aim and purpose. Lost in recent accounts are the creative and constructive practices undertaken daily by anarchist organizers seeking a world free from violence, oppression and exploitation. An examination of some of these constructive anarchist projects, which provide examples of politics grounded in everyday resistance, offers insights into real world attempts to radically transform social relations in the here and now of everyday life. This book represents the first detailed analysis of contemporary anarchist movements in North America. It critically examines the possibilities and problems facing attempts to build DIY community-based social and political movements, which seek radically to transform social relations. The work also engages theoretical developments around these emerging political practices.