Anti Capitalist Social Movements

This article explores the importance of non-capitalist space within the global political economy. The issue of how to categorise and understand space in so-called peripheral regions such as Latin America has been a contentious one. Whilst many radical analyses have focused on the dynamics of capitalism in relation to the geography of development, explaining how it has been able to survive and grow, this article makes the case for a more multi-linear theoretical framework with which to view the socioeconomic landscape. This is inspired not only by the later writings of Marx but also the specific Marxian class analysis of those involved in Rethinking Marxism. Via a focus on Oaxaca in southern Mexico, this article highlights both the survival and the recreation of spaces of non-capitalism, and provides an argument for why we should consider these to be important for transformative action more broadly, whilst also discussing their potential limitations.

Our body compulsory demands food, water and air to keep its vital functions and yet their economic nature is rather diverse with food mostly considered a private good, water suffering an accelerated privatization process and air so far considered a global common good. Food has evolved from a common good and local resource to a national asset and then to a transnational commodity as the commodification process is rather completed nowadays. Cultivated food is fully privatized and this consideration means that human beings can eat food as long as they have money to but it or means to produce it. With the dominant no money-no food rationality, hunger still prevails in a world of abundance. In order to provide a sound foundation for the transition towards sustainable food systems, the very nature of food as a pure private good is contested and subsequently reversed in this paper, proposing a re-conceptualisation of food as a common good, a necessary narrative for the redesign of the dominating agro-industrial food system that merely sees food as a tradable commodity. This aspirational transition shall lead us to a more sustainable, fairer and farmer-centred food system. The idea of the commons is applied to food, deconstructing food as a pure private good and reconstructing it as an impure commons that can be better produced and distributed by a hybrid tri-centric governance system compounded by market rules, public regulations and collective actions. Several food-related elements are already considered as common goods (i.e. fish stocks, wild fruits, cuisine recipes, agricultural knowledge, food safety regulations and unpatented genetic resources) as well as food’s implications (hunger eradication) and benefits (public health and good nutrition). Should food and be consider as a commons, the implications for the governance of the global food system would be enormous, with examples ranging from placing food outside the framework agreements dealing with pure private goods, banning financial speculation on food commodities or preparing international binding agreements to govern the production, distribution and access of food to every human being.

Este trabajo estudia la protesta estudiantil en 2011. En la primera parte se analizan las movilizaciones del estudiantado y en las tres siguientes se estudia
la estructura de oportunidad política (EOP), las estructuras de movilización y
los marcos de la acción colectiva y discursos políticos. El ciclo de protesta se explica, en buena parte, por una EOP favorable debido al apoyo que consiguió
el movimiento en diversos sectores sociales y en algunos de la clase política. Sin embargo, tal grado de movilización no se habría producido sin la Mesa Amplia Nacional Estudiantil (MANE), que aglutinó las principales organizaciones estudiantiles y, al plantearse como un espacio amplio, fue desbordada por el enrolamiento de estudiantes no organizados. El éxito del movimiento fue coronado por unas estrategias discursivas, basadas en la reivindicación de la educación como derecho, que contrarrestaron la argumentación del Gobierno y articularon a su lucha diversos actores.

In Which Side Are You On?: 20th Century American History in 100 Protest Songs, James Sullivan sets out to "tell the story of modern American democracy" through 100 songs that "span a century of petition in the name of social progress." In nine chapters, the author explores the connections between social movements in the US — nonviolence, labor, civil rights, feminism, environmentalism, free speech, gay rights, immigration rights, and anti-nuclear activism — and songs that either emerged from or came to be associated with those causes. The tenth and final chapter looks at protest in the 21st century and the Trump era.

This working paper explores the social geography of anticipation, desire, exclusion, and control that has emerged as a result of Baloch fishermen’s entanglement with the Pakistani government’s plans todevelop a large commercial seaport in the small coastal town of Gwadar. Keeping in mind the centrality of everyday experiences in generating social forms, this paper describes how development, transnationalism, and ethnic identity are (re)configured on the ground. It is based on ethnographic encounters that foreground the lived experiences and imaginations of fishermen from Med kinship group who occupy a subaltern position within the local status hierarchy. On the one hand, the promise of becoming modern citizens of the future mega city incites new desires and longings among those fishermen who facilitate their incorporation into emergent regimes of labour and entrepreneurship. On the other hand, Pakistani security forces have tightened their control over the local population by establishing a cordon sanitaire around Gwadar Port and the town. These mechanisms of control have disrupted local fishermen`s experiences of place and intimate sociality and introduced elements of exclusion, fear, and paranoia. By interrupting the fishermen`s expectations of their rightful place in the city, it compels them to think of alternate ways to confront the state’s development agenda, including peaceful protest and armed struggle .

Cosa significa protestare per le strade, perché occupare uno spazio nella città? Veniamo da un recente risveglio, da anni che hanno riportato la politica nelle piazze e nelle strade. In tutto il mondo uomini e donne sono scesi in piazza manifestando un'urgenza condivisa di resistenza, di riappropriazione degli spazi e della capacità di agire e fare politica a partire dalle vite. Come comprendere la specificità di queste esperienze? Perché chiamarle rivolte urbane e non rivoluzioni? Quali sono gli strumenti per leggere una rivolta senza astrarre, generalizzare, neutralizzare? Stare per le strade è la pratica di 'stasis' che crea lo spazio per la rivolta e contemporaneamente dispone un modo affettivo di vivere lo spazio urbano. Durante una protesta, la corporeità è esposta in tutta la sua intensità appassionata e vulnerabile. Il corpo al centro permette di cogliere la relazione che questi eventi intessono con gli spazi urbani, il nuovo senso della politica che propongono e i rapporti tra uomini e donne nel momento della protesta.

In his book, Capitalised Education: An Immanent Materialist Account of Kate Middleton, David R. Cole thoughtfully and thoroughly engages in an analysis that extends beyond the modern era to take into account a multiplicity of events and forces, which in their encounters produce social and cultural phenomena. Cole’s work is explicitly political as he engages in applied philosophy to elaborate upon the flows of capitalism and the emergence of Kate Middleton as a media object. The book, in its entirety, both is and is not about Kate Middleton. Through detailed and beautiful storytelling, Cole explores various historical plateaus (e.g., the death of Princess Diana, and monarchies of King George VI, Henry II and Lady Eleanor, the rise of industrialism, attitudes towards and about teaching) and describes the ways in which those plateaus are still at work, in some cases almost one thousand years later, to construct a capitalised education. Elaborating on the notion of capitalised education, Cole describes his project as a consideration of “the ways in which the factors analysed and revealed...come together and produce palpable social and cultural effects through Kate Middleton as media object” (p. 2). In his elaborations, Cole develops an immanent materialist analysis that is informed by the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s notions of assemblage, the rhizome, desire, and the Body without Organs, to name a few, though Cole does not get bogged down in explaining the theory itself. Rather, Cole embodies a Deleuzoguattarian ontology as he seeks to move beyond origins and causation and instead focuses on the at times more unfamiliar, but ever-proliferating intensities that impact the ways in which we emerge with that which we encounter, at times unconsciously. Students of philosophy, history, and education, and researchers who are interested in Deleuzoguattarian-influenced work will find Cole’s work both compelling and thoroughly enjoyable. ~ anonymous, Amazon site
The pomp and ceremony of a royal wedding might seem a strange anachronism in a world of global finance and cyber-capitalism. Yet, as David Cole demonstrates, the two are folded intricately into each other. Through an immanent materialist analysis that brings together key recent and historical moments or ‘plateaus’ in the emergence of capitalism, liberalism, and constitutional monarchy, and culminating in Kate Middleton’s 2011 marriage to Prince William, Cole’s wide ranging and provocative work reveals the complex and subtle ways in which capitalism’s decoding and deterritorialization go hand-in-hand with the continuation of social privileges and hierarchies. Along the way he speaks to the major political movements of the last century (liberalism, communism, fascism, empire, and decolonization), the globalization of media, the 2008 financial crisis, and more. Linking these to both established and emerging theories of radical political action, Cole traces the moments of rupture that might allow another politics to come to the fore. ~ Nathan Widder, Royal Holloway, University of London
Kate Middleton is an international celebrity, as well as a crucial figure in the biological, economic, and cultural reproduction of the British class system. In this book, David R. Cole offers us a multifaceted analysis of Middleton as "media object." Touching on topics as diverse as courtly love in medieval Europe and derivatives markets in contemporary finance, Capitalised Education traces a web of far-flung relationships that fatally lead us back to the absurdities of our collective fascination with the British Royal Family. ~ Steven Shaviro, Wayne State University
Cole has produced a masterful and critical evaluation of how the British Monarchy continues to assert and grow its influence in the 21st century. He significantly contributes to an almost muted discourse which critically explores how this influence is achieved and what is risked and gained in its attainment. The reader can’t but be left with a desire to question whether we should be comfortable with the process and effects this has on our behaviour, development and socialisation. ~ Roberto H. Parada, University of Western Sydney

This project builds on James' Scott synthesis of “reactive statelessness” theory (famously beginning with Pierre Clastres), in which he argues that pastoralism, nomadism, and foraging were often secondary forms of adaptation in response to the coercive forces of agrarian states (Scott, 2009).

“[The] argument reverses much received wisdom about “primitivism” generally. Pastoralism, foraging, shifting cultivation, and segmentary lineage systems are often a “secondary adaptation,” a kind of “self-barbarianization” adopted by peoples whose location, subsistence, and social structure are adapted to state evasion. For those living in the shadow of states, such evasion is also perfectly compatible with derivative, imitative, and parasitic state forms in the hills. (Scott, 2000, pX)”

My contention is that new foraging and nomadic livelihoods are on the rise  in the wake of global neoliberalism and the transnational corporatization of power on the one hand, and the techno-militarization of States on the other. These need to be examined and contrasted with studies of the new forms of alienation that are also arising among the world's “middle” and “affluent” classes. There is nothing new here, of course (see David Graeber on the past 5000 years), except for a question of scale.

I argue that the world's old and new foragers have a lot to teach us about sustainable knowledge and livelihoods, socio-political organization, and ecological justice.

The aim of this research effort, then, is to gather ethnographic and empirical data to support the claim that there are strong overall benefits (social, political, ecological, epidemiological, etc.) to foraging lifestyles.

A word of warning, of course, about using  “foraging” as an ideological, atemporal, naturalized category. 19th and 20th century science and anthropology have produced too much of that.
My use of the term is heuristic. Tim Ingold's critique of narrow extrapolations of Optimal Foraging Theory and rational choice in biology, economics, and anthropology is a good starting point for this discussion (see Ingold, 2000; see also Barnard, 1983; 2004, or anything by Richard Lee). Following Ingold and others (see bibliography below), I focus on a few broad aspects of livelihood that can be loosely characterized as foraging, and contrasted to the increasingly standardized systems of “modernity”.

An emphasis on autonomy, immediacy, and sharing at the level of social organization; autonomy being defined as relational—in contrast to the self-contained, self-interested 'rational' individual of modern societal constructs (Ingold, 2004); relationality being forged through decentralized, established or emerging relationships among humans and non-humans in a non-finite, complex, and dynamic field of operation.
Knowledge derived and kept alive from (not just of) the environment (“natural” or not); collaborative knowledge established through the “fine-tuning” of  these “relational contexts” between humans and the world (Ingold, 2000);
Perceptual and relational involvement with the world through open-ended wayfinding, or wayfaring practices, in contrast to grid-and-point, goal-and-destination oriented navigation and cartography (Ingold, 2000; 2007).

While we must be cautious about using modern constructs like “equality” (e.g., in terms of “gender” or “poverty”--Karen Endicot (2004) has a good review of debates on gender equality among foragers), the emphasis on relational autonomy must include more-or-less conscious efforts to avoid coercion and alienation. This usually entails knowledge of more coercive systems (e.g., agrarian, industrial, militaristic, etc.), and the “reactive” adaptive efforts to “vote with one's feet” (Lee, 2004), or “take to the hills” (Scott, 2009).

“Traditional Ecological Knowledge” is not a model to be put in a powerpoint pie-chart! The point here is to look for anti-model forms of wayfaring knowledge and social organization that are constantly renegotiated in adaptive contexts.  The Inuit Elders Saullu Nakasuk, Hervé Paniaq, Elisapee Ootoova, and Pauloosie Angmaalik put it best in their group interviews with anthropologists Jarich Oosten & Frédéric Laugrand:

“Traditional knowledge is not static and not something abstract and separated from the context in which it is produced, but is always related to the present. In this respect, it contrasts with the modern education system, which sets great value on the absorption of objectified knowledge”. (Aupilarjuk  et al, 2002, p3, emphasis added)

This paper aims to demonstrate how the organization Food Not Bombs fits into a history of counter cultural food movements, especially through focusing on multiple political aims and the building of community through mutual food production and consumption. Through speaking with members who fill multiple roles within the Ontario chapters of the movement, I explore how various issues around the commodification of food, meat consumption, and activism inform how these individuals conceptualize their ‘food activism.’

This paper focuses on the urban graffiti painted with a political message by different
movements of the Italian political radicalism in the cities of Rome, Florence, Massa,
Carrara, Verona and Udine. For the purpose of this article, during the period from June
2011 to June 2012, a total of 165 graffiti have been photographed, of which 83 painted by
neo-fascist groups, 72 by extreme left groups and 10 by anarchist groups. These three
macro communities, made of different subgroups, emerged as the most active in expressing
their antagonism towards the parliamentary parties with their graffiti that combine semantic
(words) and semiotic (images) elements. An analysis of the collected graffiti’s language
form, meaning and context allows for the identification of the variety of styles of
communication adopted by the different political antagonisms and the different contents of
their communication through graffiti as well as the key elements of their political identities.
Key words: political radicalism, graffiti, linguistics

Research concerning computer hackers generally focuses on how to stop them; far less attention is given to the texts they create. Phrack, an online hacker journal that has run almost continuously since 1985, is an important touchstone in hacker literature, widely read by both hackers and telephone and network security professionals. But beyond its instantiation as a compendium of illicit technical knowledge, Phrack was, above all, a rhetorical publication. The files in each issue of Phrack created a shared rhetorical vision concerning the place of the hacker underground within society and in relation to law enforcement officials, as well as what it means to be a hacker. This essay examines two important events in the evolution of the hacker movement through the lens of Phrack—Operation Sundevil and the arrest of Kevin Mitnick. How these events were framed in Phrack both shaped and reflected emerging shifts in hacker collective identity.

What is extractivism? Why is Latin America and the Caribbean the most dangerous region in the world for land defenders, environmental leaders, and activists? What are the impacts of extractivism on communities affected, women, indigenous and Afro-descendants? How do they stand before this process and what are their struggles and claims? What role do States, multinational corporations and other actors play in extractivism? Are there alternatives to extractivism? These are some of the questions that "Pacha: defending the land. Extractivism, Contests, and Alternatives in Latin America and the Caribbean "tries to respond. Visiting the protagonism of the communities affected by extractivism, we also want to show the multiplication of alternatives to development that generate diverse strategies for the defence of land and traditional ways of life, as well as the creation of new paradigms such as Good Living derived from knowledge and perspectives of the region's people.

Diese Arbeit befasst sich mit der Besetzung des sog. Heusnerviertels in Bochum ab 1980. Aus einem studentischen Verlangen nach bezahlbarem Wohnraum und den Forderungen der Bochumer Jugendlichen nach einem Soziokulturellen Zentrum entwickelte sich Beginn der 1980er Jahre einer der größten deutschen Besetzerzusammenhänge. Mitten im Ruhrgebiet entstand so ein Ort für politisch aktive Jugendliche, Punks, Außenseiter und Abhängige.
Besonders wird das sog. Heusnerviertel, neben seiner Größe, durch die guten Verbindungen der Besetzer zu anderen Projekten aber auch durch die Probleme, welche die Besetzer mit der Stadtregierung bezüglich der Stadtentwicklung hatten. Eine bereits vor dem 2. Weltkrieg geplante und von vielen Seiten kritisierte Umgehungsstraße führte letztendlich zur Räumung und Abriss des Heusnerviertels.

Diese Arbeit befasst sich sowohl mit der Geschichte, dem Protest und den Nachwirkungen dieser Besetzung. Geht dabei vor allem auf die persönlichen Erfahrungen der Besetzer ein welche über Interviews, graue Literatur sowie eine selbstveröffentlichte Dokumentation eingefangen wurden.

This research uses a resource mobilization analytic framework to undertake an empirical assessment of central and controversial claims of new social movements (NSM) theory.  Key dimensions of organizational style along which social movement organizations (SMOs) among the "new" social movements are expected to differ significantly from those within "old" social movements are specified.  These include degree of bureaucracy, (de)centralization of power and organizational operating strategy, whether participatory or professionalized.  The rich organizational level data assembled here from separate national samples of "new" and "old" SMOs enable each dimension of organizational style to be examined empirically.  Multiple regression analyses of cross-movement differences and intra-movement variation over time in these indicators of organizational style constitutes the empirical basis for assessing new social movements theory.
NSM data comes from 411 peace movement organizations (PMOs) that responded to a nationally representative 1988 mail survey of "groups working for peace" in the United States.  The PMO sample of 803 was drawn from among the 7,700 groups listed in the 1987 edition of the Grassroots Peace Directory.  "Old" movement data comes primarily from 177 poor people's empowerment organizations that responded to a 1987 mailed survey of 482 groups that received grant funding from the Campaign for Human Development (CHD) between 1982-1986.  The strengths and limitations of this unique cross-movement data set are described and its appropriateness for assessing specific claims of NSM theory claims discussed extensively.
Results of the cross movement analyses generally contradict or fail to confirm relevant expectations of NSM theory and undermine confidence in it as an explanation of the distinctiveness of the so called new social movements.  Generally only the smallest SMOs regardless of their social class base, social change goals or the broader movement to which they belong fit the NSM organizational profile.  Similarly, the age related expectations of NSM theory regarding the persistence of the NSM organizational style over time find no support in this assessment.  NSM theory undervalues the importance of meso level social structures in understanding the reflexive relationship between social movements and social change, and oversimplifies the dynamics related to the distribution, persistence, and transformation of SMO forms over time.

Academic and activist accounts of the Irish crisis have mirrored the fragmentation of mainstream academic disciplines and the separation of different social institutions, offering analyses that focus whichever aspect which valorises their own intellectual capital and positions their own politics centre-stage, whether this means petitioning elites for a different kind of policy, hoping for a change in voting patterns, describing the progress of poverty or theorising the movements of capital. In taking a part for the whole, it is not only the changing relationships between these parts which is lost but in particular a sense of how radical popular agency can at times break down these neat categorical barriers – as when popular cultures in resistance to state policy on water produce a crisis of authority, transform the space within which movements mobilise and enable hope for a different kind of state. To place the focus on how popular agency has developed across a range of social movements and struggles does not avoid this problem entirely, but does open the door for a greater sense of development, interrelationship and struggle between the different elements.

This paper situates recent Irish movements against austerity in the longer context of movement landscapes since 1968 – themselves shaped by changing class relationships and hegemonic alliances, shifts in popular culture, state incorporation of movement organisations of all kinds and events in the North. The rise of the non-institutional social movement left in the early 2000s marked a significant break with the statist old left; since 2007 an important concern of the latter has been to use the crisis to return discussion to its preferred terrain of economics and state policy while implicitly positioning itself – as social-democratic policy expert, as vanguard party or as various kinds of radical theorist – as central to a resolution of the problem. This, however, has not resolved the underlying problem of agency which the rise of the non-institutional left had made visible, and the results of traditional strategies have been poor, both in terms of effective resistance and in terms of sustaining mobilisation.

In this sense the water charges protests, coming after the collapse of the organisational alliance which was supposed to be organising them, represent a return of movement as against organisations: they have raised much wider issues, seen massive participation and a sharp radicalisation of methods. The complex relationship between this movement and the various bodies – informal community groups, trade unions, left parties and others – involved in coordination remains in flux and subject to the usual logics of “organisational patriotism” as against “the interests of the movement as a whole”. In this context it is important, both theoretically and practically, to find adequate means of articulating the “movement as a whole”, in its diverse and changing aspects, rather than insist on the a priori primacy of one or another moment. The paper concludes with some reflections on a series of events in early 2015 aimed at articulating this wider sense of movement, the differing analyses they represent and the different perspectives they open up.

In a recent interview with the Chicago Tribune (Trice 2014), while discussing how modern Native Americans have become culturally invisible in the United States, indigenous rapper Frank Waln stated “we’re a people with a past, not of the past.” This is a process he calls “symbolic annihilation.” In many ways, the Gallina invert Waln’s sentence. They were a people of the past but without a past. By purposely removing objects that referenced their place-based past, they removed their recent history to focus more fully on the period of the distant past (Basketmaker II) that was their atavistic ideal. They simultaneously removed themselves from history while wrapping themselves in their own version of the past. For this chapter, then, to reverse the standard archaeological gaze and view the Gallina as active producers and not just recipients of history, I used geosocial networks and architectural patterning to explore potential patterns in the archaeological record through the lens of social movements. The case study was conducted at the community level. The community data were synthesized in a bottom-up, diachronic, and cross-regional inquiry into the use of space and use of markers of place within and between Gallina communities. Thus, the Gallina are viewed as part of a historical continuum instead of merely within a spatially restricted culture area. From this perspective, they become much more than a culturally impoverished group that was pushed into poor resource areas at the margins of more demographically dense, culturally rich groups. Instead, when the non-local ceramics found in some Gallina households are interpreted as remnants of largely forgotten inscribed memory, they become a people with varied histories who chose to reject the northern Southwest’s changing social landscape by systematically removing their place-based connections to that history and then reworking their political and ideological world.
By taking a diachronic and network perspective, the Gallina become a people who chose their way in their world. Specifically, they decided to step out of a cultural and ideological trajectory diametrically opposed to their ideas on how life should be organized. Once socially and historically situated, the Gallina highlands look more like a place of refuge for people who were rebelling against political and religious changes in the northern Southwest than an area populated by simple folk unable to keep pace with their rapidly changing neighbors. The Gallina region suddenly becomes a much more complicated place—a diverse collection of people dedicated to creating a new community at the edges of their previous world, one with clear material connections to antecedent regional groups (see Simpson 2016) but with new architectural and artifactual forms (i.e., tri-notched axes and pointed-bottom vessels). However, they are not a hybrid group like the colonial resistors Homi K. Bhabha (1994) was describing when he redefined hybridity. Instead, as a product of their atavistic movement, they become hybrids through time. By appropriating the past for their own intentions, they become rebels in their present—pioneers of a future history.

This paper looks at the key characteristics that set Extinction Rebellion UK apart from campaigns waged on behalf of the Earth in the US, from the perspective of a life-long wildlife and public lands advocate, attorney, and ecopsychologist who, though an outsider, has been actively conversing with  XR UK insiders since it really took hold in the Summer of 2019. The author maintains that it is the religious fervor of XR UK that sets it apart from more traditional campaigns in the US, and encourages XR US to embrace religious sentiments towards Gaia, or Mother Earth.

The Seventeen Contradictions is an x-ray of tensions, trends and tendencies in capital and capitalism that empowers us to look forward. Taking the still ongoing 2008 economic crisis as a starting point, Harvey investigates how the capitalist economy that produces such crises is embedded in contradictions. Seventeen of these are discussed throughout the book.