‘We Are Everywhere’: An Ecological Analysis of Organizations in the Anarchist Yellow Pages

Abstract

The Anarchist Yellow Pages (AYP), an international directory of anarchist groupings throughout the world, listed over two thousand organizations in 2005. This paper explores the types of these anarchist organizations and their geographic clustering throughout the world, with special emphasis on the 21 countries with at least 20 such organizations. The concentrations of anarchist organizations found in the AYP suggest that the movement tends to be strongly European-centered. North Americans are greatly involved in various media organizations; Spain, France, and Sweden have strong syndicalist tendencies; Italy and Germany tend to have a high percentage of physical spaces like social centers and info shops. The theory of political opportunity is used to interpret the global anarchist movement, leading to the general conclusion that rights and democracy are related to the concentration of anarchist organizations.

Anarchists and Labor Unions: An Analysis Using New Social Movement Theories

“…Because three‐fifths of the non‐North Americans in the Infoshop survey are Europeans, this difference could suggest varying intra‐movement attitudes across the Atlantic Ocean, varying levels of unionization in the workforce, or higher numbers of labor‐oriented organizations with the European anarchist movement. To give supporting evidence to the latter possibility, the Anarchist Yellow Pages directory of anarchist organizations lists large numbers of class‐based organizations (including syndicalist unions, IWW branches, or International Workers Association chapters) in countries like France, Spain, and Sweden—far more per capita than in either the U.S. or Canada (Williams and Lee 2008).…”

“…4 4 Such regional variation is also reflected in the types of anarchist organizations (see Williams and Lee 2008) and ideological variation, such as Williams's (2009) study of red and green anarchist variation in the U.S. …”

Aiming to Overthrow the State (Without Using the State): Political Opportunities for Anarchist Movements

“…Williams and Lee (2008) demonstrated a positive and statistically significant relationship between the concentration of anarchist organizations per country listed in the Anarchist Yellow Pages (AYP) directory and various forms of rights and access, including civil liberties, political rights, press rights, and the level of democracy. Yet, rather than being a direct relationship, this positive association is likely mediated through other phenomena.…”

“…PO theory (McAdam 1996) and past studies (Williams & Lee 2008) have tended to consider objective and easily quantifiable opportunities and not the subjective opportunities that matter to participants. We argue that opportunities must be perceived as real to insiders in order to be a useful in the analysis of historical, subjective narratives, either in the present or in retrospect.…”

Radicaliser l’action collective : portrait de l’option libertaire au Québec

“…L'intérêt de cette étude de cas tient notamment à la nécessité d'actualiser les rares travaux qui se sont intéressés à la question de l'enracinement québécois du phénomène global de résurgence du courant libertaire (Delisle-L'Heureux et Dupuis-Déri, 2007 ;LambertPilotte et al, 2007 ;Gaudet et Sarrasin, 2008). Cette recherche poursuit ainsi la démarche de même nature portant sur l'incarnation récente de l'expérience libertaire en Europe (Della Porta, 2004, Agrikoliansky et al, 2005, aux États-Unis (Epstein, 2001 ;Williams et Lee, 2008 ;Williams, 2009) ou encore en Israël et en Palestine (Gordon, 2008), pour ne nommer que quelques-uns de ces travaux. Même si l'anarchisme est présent dans les luttes sociales au Québec depuis la fin du XIX e siècle (Houle-Courcelles, 2008), on peut en effet convenir que la tradition libertaire y était moins bien implantée qu'en d'autres contrées avant les mobilisations altermondialistes qui ont marqué les décennies 1990 et 2000.…”