Why a radical geography must be anarchist

Abstract

Radical geographers have been preoccupied with Marxism for four decades, largely ignoring an earlier anarchist tradition that thrived a century before radical geography was claimed as Marxist in the 1970s. When anarchism is considered, it is misused as a synonym for violence or derided as a utopian project. Yet it is incorrect to assume anarchism as a project, which instead reflects Marxian thought. Anarchism is more appropriately considered a protean process that perpetually unfolds through the insurrectionary geographies of the everyday and the prefigurative politics of direct action, mutual aid, and voluntary association. Unlike Marxism’s stages of history and revolutionary imperative, which imply an end state, anarchism appreciates the dynamism of the social world. In staking a renewed anarchist claim for radical geography, I attend to the divisions between Marxism and anarchism as two alternative socialisms, wherein the former positions equality alongside an ongoing flirtation with authoritarianism, while the latter maximizes egalitarianism and individual liberty by considering them as mutually reinforcing. Radical geographers would do well to reengage anarchism as there is a vitality to this philosophy that is missing from Marxian analyses that continue to rehash ideas—such as vanguardism and a proletarian dictatorship—that are long past their expiration date.

Urban agriculture, racial capitalism, and resistance in the settler‐colonial city

“…Many scholars have raised that alarm that a narrow focus on political economic structures, particularly those grounded in Marxian critiques of neoliberal capitalism, can foreclose alternative, anti-capitalist pathways (Gibson-Graham, 2006;Parnell & Robinson, 2012;Springer, 2014). Scholars of Black geographies have further warned of the scholarly erasure of Black epistemologies, ontologies, and material practices.…”

Apparatuses of occupation: translocal social movements, states and the archipelagic spatialities of power

“…This phenomenon of non‐state actors territorialising power has, of course, not gone unnoticed by geographers and other social scientists (Routledge ; Rose‐Redwood ). In particular, anarchist‐inspired theorists have long appreciated how power is territorialised through direct action and occupation (Day ; Ince ; Springer ). While there has been a lively debate over the benefits of promoting an anarchist agenda within geographic scholarship (Clough ; Clough and Blumberg ; Hayes‐Conroy ; Harvey ; Springer ), it is hard to deny that social movement tactics that stem from the anarchist tradition are a prominent element in contemporary activism and are worthy of researchers’ attention.…”

“…In particular, anarchist‐inspired theorists have long appreciated how power is territorialised through direct action and occupation (Day ; Ince ; Springer ). While there has been a lively debate over the benefits of promoting an anarchist agenda within geographic scholarship (Clough ; Clough and Blumberg ; Hayes‐Conroy ; Harvey ; Springer ), it is hard to deny that social movement tactics that stem from the anarchist tradition are a prominent element in contemporary activism and are worthy of researchers’ attention. The label and banners of anarchism are not at the forefront of the organising and rhetoric of either the Okinawan or global networks of anti‐militarisation activism, but principles long championed by anarchists such as egalitarianism, self‐determination, direct action civil disobedience, mutual aid and non‐hierarchical organisational structures saturate both (Davis ).…”

Forgotten Plotlanders: Learning from the Survival of Lost Informal Housing in the UK

“…In the wake of the continued axiomatic split between Marxist and anarchist political theory (Springer 2014;Harvey 2015b), perhaps it should not be of surprise to find that whilst discourse concerning the poltics of urbanisation and the history of socialist housing continues to abound, the notion of an anarchist housing policy remains merely either a historical curiosity or isolated in a geographical intrigue aimed at the effervescent cities of the Global South (P. M. Ward 2008, 284 (Rudolfsky 1987), 'Architecture for the Poor' (Fathy 1976), and 'Freedom to Build (Fichter and Turner 1972). Yet whilst the architectural contexts of these books are scattered in the space of 'other' (culturally assumed as 'backward' or 'primitive') cultures, 4 crucially Ward's discourse is in contrast situated within the core of Western space and society.…”