Anthropology and Anarchism

Anarchy and anarchism are the expression of a political philosophy whose thought assembles the
figures of collectivism, individualism, solidarity, autonomy, or else radical dissent as elements of a
project of social transformation with a teleological perspective. Its critical approach focuses
essentially on the issue of power and forms of domination. However, it is also, in the vernacular, an
expression that improperly denotes a situation of chaos or of political contestation that threatens to
overthrow in reality or as phantasm the social order of a given society.

As a political philosophy, anarchys influence on the social sciences and on anthropology in particular
is relatively misunderstood, with the exception of the tutelary Pierre Clastres. We will examine how
the common perception of anarchy is unduly reprised, as well as the many areas that it encompasses
(power structures, spaces of autonomy, processes of liberation, marginal positions, and, in a variety
of forms, the rejection of norms, including social, cultural, territorial, authoritarian and hegemonic
ones). It is not question of evoking a militant imaginary nor of analyzing forms of domination by the
heroisation of militants or of the indigenous struggle, through praise of their folklore. This
perspective impedes the understanding of the overarching power structures within insurrectional
groups. One can furthermore wonder whether an anarchist anthropology may only appear relevant,
following upon a Marxist anthropology that formulated theories on social relations through the prism
of an idealized conception of economics and politics.

Two recent publications have brought these questions to the forefront: James Scott, with The Art of
Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia, and David Graeber, with
Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, invite us to continue, with this volume, an analysis of this
dynamic, which is deployed, during investigation, in the building of particular non-hierarchical
connections with the environment studied and by the use of specific writing techniques for the
ethnographic text. The radical anthropology movement pursues this same epistemological ambition
without researchers claiming personal political positions but rather a method and a model for a
radical critical reading of the social processes at work.

The political dimension of any approach to writing on reality comes up against two principles:
temporal and contextual legitimization, in terms of era and available knowledge, and the one that
interests us here, heuristic value. How, beyond anarchys denotative, poetic or ideological facets, do
the ideas and representations, mechanisms and social realities, but also the discourses and forms of
the imaginary that can be linked to the idea and concept of anarchy manifest themselves? What re-
articulations, in the words of Scott, now seem capable of surpassing Marxist perspectives without
renouncing the emancipatory project of the social sciences? Between projections and ethnographic
realities, to which spaces, objects, methodological foundations, fields, and new research perspectives
might an anarchist anthropology give rise, when - if we are to believe the advocates of an "anarchist
turn" it could succeed the Marxist and postmodern schools.
This volume will thus treat objects, domains, and related methodological questions that connect
anthropology or ethnography to anarchism, such as:

- Non-market production and trade

- Relationships, morals and sexual liberation
- Insurrectional regions and revolutionary romanticism
- Experimental constructions and utopian forms
- Political structures, sovereignty and autonomy
- Democracy and horizontal practices
- Normative dimensions of inherited knowledge, categories and representations
- The concept of anarchy in literature, philosophy, ethno-politics, and aesthetic, visual, digital and
technical representations (DIY, Free Culture, Open Access, Copyleft, Digital freedom, Common goods,
etc.)

Schedule and instructions for authors: article abstract (1/2 to 1 page, in Word format) should be
addressed to the coordinators by mail before March 1st 2017, and the full article (maximum 40,000
characters, including spaces, bibliography, english and french abstracts -5 to 10 lines) before
September 1st 2017, with a copy to the editorial staff of the Journal des Anthropologues (afa@msh-
paris.fr).

Coordinators :

Sophie Accolas : sophieaccolas@yahoo.fr

Jacob Durieux : noir_sur_blanc@hotmail.com

Ariel Planeix : arielplaneix@gmail.com