Anarchist Gatherings 1986-2017
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14288/acme.v18i4.1621Keywords:
events, prefiguration, fields, social movements, abeyance, protest, AnarchismAbstract
Anarchists gather as well as protest, form organizations, projects and networks. They do so at events that transform movements and are transformed by the ebbs and flows of social life. These events build strategy, create shared identities, and create new and stronger mobilizing networks between activists working on different issues in different places. This paper draws on the relational sociology of Charles Tilly and Pierre Bourdieu to examine the relationships between context, and event. Continental anarchist gatherings emerged during the 1980s when anarchist movements (like other protest oriented movements) were weak, and prefiguration and counterculture were important. Analysing the programs and documents of anarchist gatherings since 1986, it maps 2 main shifts in format, content and function. First, gatherings moved from being a single, continental event that shifted in location to being multiple, local and (often) annual. Second, they moved from an emphasis on identity caucusing and skill building to one of networking and exchange. The paper ties these changes to the broader context, changes in the social movement field (including waves of protest) and changes inside anarchist movements. The paper concludes that examining such events offers insight into movements more generally, and helps to show they help to illustrate micro-shifts in anarchist movement strategy, identity and mobilization.
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Without Borders: Anarchist Conference and Festival: July 20-25, 1989. Guide Book.
Active Resistance 1996, Chicago. August 21-31, 1996, Program.
Active Resistance. 1996. Community Organizing Core Section Participant Workbook.
Active Resistance. 1998. Toronto, August 17-23, 1998. Anarchy in the Streets.
Anarchist Survival Gathering, 1988. An Anarchist Unconvention. July 1-4, 1988, A Guide to the Gathering.
Bay Area Book Fair History. N.d. Bay Area Book Fair History. https://bayareaanarchistbookfair.wordpress.com/book-fair-history/
Bey, Hakim (aka Peter Lamborn Wilson). 1985/1991. The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism. Autonomedia
Bourdieu, Pierre and Loic Wacquant. 1992. Invitation for a Reflexive Sociology. University of Chicago Press.
Castells, Manuel. 2012. Networks of Outrage and Hope. Polity.
Cornell, Andrew. 2011a. Oppose and Propose: Lessons from Movement for a New Society, AK Press.
Cornell, Andrew. 2011b “A new anarchism emerges, 1940–1954,” Journal for the Study of Radicalism, 5:1, Spring 2011, published by Michigan State University Press. https://libcom.org/history/new-anarchism-emerges-1940%E2%80%931954
Cornell, Andrew. 2016. Unruly Equality: US Anarchism in the 20th Century. University of California.
Crass, Chris. 2013. Towards Collective Liberation: Anti-Racist Organizing, Feminist Praxis and Movement Building Strategy. PM Press.
Crossley, Nick. 2003. From Reproduction to Transformation: Social Movement Fields and the Radical Habitus. Theory, Culture and Society 20 (6):43-68 (2003).
Day, Chris. n.d. The Pre-Political History of Love and Rage. https://www.sproutdistro.com/catalog/zines/history/the-political-pre-history-of-love-rage/.
Della Porta, Donatella. 2008. Eventful protest, global conflicts. Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal of Social Theory 9.2 (2008): 27-56.
Dixon, Chris. 2014. Another Politics; Talking across Today's Transformative Movements. University of California Press.
Gerbaudo, Paulo. 2012. Tweets in the Streets. Pluto Press.
Gordon, Uri. 2008. Anarchy Alive!: Anti-Authoritarian Politics from Practice to Theory. Pluto Press.
Gould, Deborah B. 2009. Moving Politics: Emotion and ACT UP's Fight against AIDS. University of Chicago Press.
Graeber, David. 2010. The Rebirth of Anarchism in North America, 1957-2007. Historia Actual Online, No 21
Graham, Robert. 2015. We Do Not Fear Anarchy—We Invoke It: The First International and the Origins of the Anarchist Movement. AK Press.
Haworth, Robert H. 2012 Anarchist Pedagogies: Collective Actions, Theories, and Critical Reflections on Education. PM Press.
Haymarket ’86 Bulletin. November 1985 Conference Summary.
Hern, Matt. 2003. The Emergence of Compulsory Schooling and Anarchist Resistance. Social Ecology. http://social-ecology.org/2003/10/the-emergence-of-compulsory-schooling-and-anarchist-resistance/.
Infoshop. 2017. ”Your Friendly Neighborhood Infoshop” http://www.infoshop.org/your-friendly-neighborhood-infoshop/.
Iwasa, A. 2015. “New anarchist federation and anti-fascist network form and a look to past efforts.” https://libcom.org/library/new-anarchist-federation-anti-fascist-network-form-look-past-efforts-iwasa.
Johnson, Stephen K. and Rogers Worthington. 1986. “A Magnificent Mile Of Anarchy,” The Chicago Tribune. http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1986-05-03/news/8602010040_1_anarchists-haymarket-square-anarchy.
Juris, Jeff. 2012. “Reflections on #Occupy Everywhere: Social media, public space, and emerging logics of aggregation” American Ethnologist Volume 39, Issue 2.May 2012.Pages 259–279.
Kauffman, LA 2016. Direct Action: Protest and the Reinvention of American Radicalism. Verso.
Kinsman, Gary. 1987/1995. The Regulation of Desire: Homo and Hetero Sexualities: Montreal, New York: Black Rose.
Krinsky, John. 2008. Free labor: Workfare and the contested language of neoliberalism. University of Chicago Press.
Martin, Eryk. 2015. “The Blurred Boundaries of Anarchism and Punk 1970-1983,” Labour/Le Travail 75. (Spring 2015) 9-41.
McCarthy, John D., and Mayer N. Zald. 1977. Resource mobilization and social movements: A partial theory. American journal of sociology 82.6: 1212-1241.
Mische, Ann. 2002. Cross-Talk in Movements: Reconceiving the Culture Network Link. In Mario Diani and Doug McAdam’s Social Movement Analysis: The Network Perspective. Oxford University Press.
Montreal Anarchist Book Fair 2017. http://www.anarchistbookfair.ca/.
NYC Anarchist Book Fair 2017. http://anarchistbookfair.net/.
Polletta, Francesca. 1998. "“It was like a fever…” narrative and identity in social protest." Social Problems 45.2: 137-159.
Polletta, Francesca. 2002. Freedom is An Endless Meeting: Democracy in American Social Movements. Chicago University Press.
Portwood-Stacer, Laura. 2013. Lifestyle Politics and Radical Activism. Bloomsbury Academic.
Sewell, William H. 1996. "Three temporalities: Toward an eventful sociology." The historic turn in the human sciences: 245-80.
Shepherd, Benjamin H. 2009. Queer Political Performance and Protest. Routledge.
Sitrin, Marina and Dario Azzellini. 2014. They Can’t Represent Us! London: Verso.
Springer, Simon, Marcelo Lopes de Souza and Richard J. White (eds) 2016. The Radicalization of Pedagogy: Anarchism, Geography, and the Spirit of Revolt. Rowman and Littlefield.
Shotwell, Alexis. 2016. Against Purity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Solnit, David. 1996. “Anarchy in Chicago” Fifth Estate #348, Fall, 1996. https://fifthestate.anarchistlibraries.net/library/348-fall-1996-anarchy-in-chicago.
Suissa, Judith. 2010. Anarchism and Education: A Philosophical Perspective. PM Press.
Tarrow, Sidney. 2011. Power in Movement, 2nd edition. New York/London: Cambridge University Press.
Taylor, Verta. 1989. “Social Movement Continuity: The Women's Movement in Abeyance,” American Sociological Review, Vol. 54, No. 5 (Oct., 1989), pp. 761-775.
The Collective 2016. Topic of the Week: Conferences, gatherings, and meetings http://anarchistnews.org/content/topic-week-conferences-gatherings-meetings.
Tilly, Charles. 1998. Popular Contention in Great Britain. Boston: Harvard University Press.
Tilly, Charles. 2006. Regimes and Repertoires. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Toronto Survival Gathering. 1988. Programme.
Wagner-Pacifici, Robin. 2017. What is an Event? Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Wood, Lesley J., Suzanne Staggenborg, Glenn J. Stalker. Rachel Kutz-Flamenbaum. 2017. “Eventful events: local outcomes of G20 summit protests in Pittsburgh and Toronto,” Social Movement Studies 16:5. Pp. 595-609.
Weir, Joan. 1988. Survival Gathering Toronto July 1-4, 1988. In, Only a Beginning: An Anarchist Anthology. Edited by Allan Antliff. Arsenal Pulp Press.
Without Borders: Anarchist Conference and Festival: July 20-25, 1989. Guide Book.
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Published
2019-09-12
How to Cite
Wood, L. (2019). Anarchist Gatherings 1986-2017. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 18(4), 892–908. https://doi.org/10.14288/acme.v18i4.1621
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