Universal geography elisee reclus why anarchists
For that, this work presents a picture of his involvement with the anarchist movement and of how he sought to bring such theorizations of freedom closer to geographic thinking. The approximation between geography and anarchism was achieved by establishing bonds between Reclus and other anarchist characters of his time, who constituted a circle of studies around geography and communist anarchism.
My main hypothesis is that the collaboration between feminist militants and anarchist geographers, questioning patriarchy, endorsing 'free union' and mixed education, anticipated several features of successive anarchist feminisms, and that its study can be a useful contribution to a " Feminist Historical Geography. They questioned the sympathy expressed sometimes by Reclus and his entourage for the settlement of European workers in lands like the Maghreb, a view that apparently clashes with his political ideology, given that Reclus was an exile of the Paris Commune and one of the founders, along with Mikhail Bakunin, of the international anarchist movement within the International Workers Association.
Nevertheless, these geographers analyzed only a small part of Reclus' corpus: more recently, after the international conferences held in Lyon, Montpellier and Milan in to mark the centenary of Reclus' death, other researchers Bord et al. Like some classic works on French geography for instance, Berdoulay , this new research stresses the anti-colonial aspects of Reclus' geography, and his attempt to relativize concepts like 'Europe', 'East' and 'West' in a way that appears very original, particularly if we compare it to the prevailing European science at that time.
She gives the events of his life a rich context in nineteenth-century European history, in the radical milieu of that period, and, most particularly, in the events and ideas of the anarchist movement of the epoch. Where the work is weakest is in the area of theory. Fleming hardly mentions Reclus' most important work of social theory, L'Homme et la Terre, an impressive six-volume study, and she makes only a few brief references to other theoretical discussions.
Social geography is the study of how landscape, climate, and other features of a place shape the livelihoods, values, and cultural traditions of its inhabitants and vice versa. His approach to anarchy was unique in its emphasis on the environment -Reclus understood that a mindset that encourages one person or people's domination over another must, in the race to profit from natural "resources", also foster domination over nature.
Like the social ecologists who have succeeded him, Reclus believed that solutions to ecological crises must involve restoring balance, equality, and a sense of interrelationship between humans and other humans, and between humans and the biosphere. The "modern" manifestations of oppression including the concentration of wealth and power, surveillance, racism, sexism, and ecological degradation that concerned Reclus in lates Europe, the United States, and Central and South America are indeed still strikingly -infuriatingly -present.
The second half of the book consists of translations of several pieces from Reclus' extensive oeuvre, some of which have never before appeared in English translation. AS: Can you describe how anarchy - specifically the kind based in mutual aid and environmental responsibility in service to a greater good illuminated here by Reclus, and by you in your book The Impossible Community, differs from other conceptions or misconceptions of anarchy, and how it might as contrasted with other ideologies be useful to us now?
John P. Clark: The world is rife with misconceptions about anarchism. Anarchy is the entire sphere of human life that takes place outside the boundaries of arche, or domination, in all its forms -statism, nationalism, capitalism, patriarchy, racial oppression, heterosexism, technological domination, the domination of nature, etc. It rejects the hegemony of the centralized state, the capitalist market, and any hybrid of the two, and seeks to create a society free of all systematic forms of domination of humanity and nature.
It envisions a society in which power remains decentralized at the base, decision--making is carried out through voluntary association and participatory democracy, and larger social purposes are pursued through the free federation of communities, affinity groups, and associations. Anarchism is not merely about a transformation of social institutional structures, however.
The Earth Story, the Human Story. The Dialectic of Nature and Culture. Anarchism and Social Transformation. The Feeling for Nature in Modern Society To My Brother the Peasant Evolution, Revolution, and the Anarchist Ideal Advice to My Anarchist Comrades Edition Notes with an introductory essay by John Clark. R43 A3 eb. Number of pages Dimensions 23 x PM Press publisher Dataspace german inventaire.
Community Reviews 0. In this paper, we deal first with the importance of this source: it is an example of the material work of a network of geographers who were at the same time the founders of the international anarchist movement. We suggest the correspondence falls into two parts: the first period — when Reclus was in exile in Switzerland after the Paris Commune of , and Kropotkin was in prison in France; and the second period — when the two anarchist geographers discuss the role of geographical education, historical geography in Europe and its part in the globalisation of their era.
The archive also contains significant evidence of their relationships with British geography: Kropotkin lived in London and joined the Royal Geographical Society and was on familiar terms with leading Fellows, such as John Scott Keltie and Halford Mackinder. The paper addresses the significance of the correspondence for understanding the relationships between geography, politics and public education, and the role of these heterodox geographers in the construction of geographical knowledge.
The paper is accompanied by the publication, for the first time, of an edited selection of the letters. Drawing upon Benedict Anderson's notions of " anti-colonial imagination " and of different " frameworks of comparison " , I show how Reclus tried to perform an anarchist geographical teaching by simultaneously embracing empathy toward cultural differences and universal feelings of justice and international solidarity.
Therefore, he taught a non-statist geography by showing his students what James Scott calls " the art of not being governed " , addressing the examples of the egalitarian traditions of some non-European peoples, together with their anti-authoritarian and anti-colonial struggles. Social geography is the study of how landscape, climate, and other features of a place shape the livelihoods, values, and cultural traditions of its inhabitants and vice versa.
His approach to anarchy was unique in its emphasis on the environment -Reclus understood that a mindset that encourages one person or people's domination over another must, in the race to profit from natural "resources", also foster domination over nature. Like the social ecologists who have succeeded him, Reclus believed that solutions to ecological crises must involve restoring balance, equality, and a sense of interrelationship between humans and other humans, and between humans and the biosphere.
The "modern" manifestations of oppression including the concentration of wealth and power, surveillance, racism, sexism, and ecological degradation that concerned Reclus in lates Europe, the United States, and Central and South America are indeed still strikingly -infuriatingly -present. The second half of the book consists of translations of several pieces from Reclus' extensive oeuvre, some of which have never before appeared in English translation.
AS: Can you describe how anarchy - specifically the kind based in mutual aid and environmental responsibility in service to a greater good illuminated here by Reclus, and by you in your book The Impossible Community, differs from other conceptions or misconceptions of anarchy, and how it might as contrasted with other ideologies be useful to us now?
John P. Clark: The world is rife with misconceptions about anarchism. Anarchy is the entire sphere of human life that takes place outside the boundaries of arche, or domination, in all its forms -statism, nationalism, capitalism, patriarchy, racial oppression, heterosexism, technological domination, the domination of nature, etc.
It rejects the hegemony of the centralized state, the capitalist market, and any hybrid of the two, and seeks to create a society free of all systematic forms of domination of humanity and nature. It envisions a society in which power remains decentralized at the base, decision--making is carried out through voluntary association and participatory democracy, and larger social purposes are pursued through the free federation of communities, affinity groups, and associations.
Anarchism is not merely about a transformation of social institutional structures, however. As further discussed in my book The Impossible Community, it also encompasses a fundamental transformation of the social imaginary, the social ideology, and the social ethos. Communitarian anarchism assumes that social transformation, to be successful, must encompass all major spheres of social determination.
It recognizes that there are ontological, ethical, aesthetic, psychological, and spiritual dimensions of anarchy or non--domination. According to Reclus and other communitarian anarchists, these are not just vague ideals to be achieved in some future utopia; rather, such a transformation is immediately realized here and now wherever love and solidarity are embodied in existing human relationships and social practice.
Anarchism is strongly committed to "prefigurative" forms of association, and to the idea of "creating the new society within the shell of the old. By demonstrating that the most deeply rooted social order arises not out of coercion, oppression, and domination, but out of mutual aid and cooperation, communitarian anarchism is a truly revolutionary project.
In working to regenerate community at the most fundamental level, it seeks to reverse the course of thousands of years of history in which relations of solidarity have been progressively replaced by market relations, commodity relations, bureaucratic relations, technical relations, instrumental relations, and relations of coercion and domination.
The ecocidal and genocidal effects of such relations compel us to consider whether we will remain on history's present catastrophic course, or seize the opportunity to rededicate ourselves to the flourishing of both humanity and the whole of life in the biospheric community. In the work of Reclus we find universally accessible, immediately implementable alternatives.
It contributes to recent international research on the interplay of art and anarchism through the prism of Reclus and his scholarly and activist networks. Based on the exploration of primary sources such as correspondence and original texts by Reclus and his collaborators, my main argument is that Reclus's engagement with visual arts especially drawing and painting allows us to understand some fundamental points of his geography and his anarchism.
Reclus's idea of beauty was inseparably linked to his idea of justice. Therefore, he argued that the social scientist, the activist and the artist had the task of building a better world, socially and aesthetically. For that reason, Reclus cooperated with artists representing different visual tendencies because he considered social content paramount in the assessment of art; though engaging directly with visual languages for both geographical publishing and political propaganda.
Reclus and the anarchist geographers were strongly committed to the visual arts of their day. Within a wide network of intellectuals, activists and painters they proved to be at once influential and influenced. This essay suggests that several aspects of the artistic avant-garde of the first half of the twentieth century, such as the social role of art, the questioning of the aura and the dichotomy between the 'creative genius' and art's recipients were anticipated by early anarchist geographers.
Using both their published work and unpublished archival sources, the paper analyses the various translations, multilingual studies and interpretations of Reclus that the Fabbris undertook in Italy and later Latin America, and the role they played in the international circulation and reinterpretation of Reclus's ideas. This paper contributes to current studies of the circulation of geographical knowledge and historical geographies of science, as well as to the transnational turn in the social sciences and, in particular, its application to 'anarchist studies'.
It draws on the recent international literature devoted to the historical and epistemological relations between geography and anarchism, stressing the intimate relationship between intellectual and political work among early anarchist geographers. Log in with Facebook Log in with Google. Remember me on this computer. Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.
Need an account? Click here to sign up. Domosh, K. Morin, T. Federico Ferretti. Kosuch ed. Anarchist Avant-Garde, Amsterdam, Brill, Anarchist geography. Geografia anarquista. He had his sentence commuted to banishment from France, after which he lived in Switzerland during a period of intense dedication to radical political engagement and geographic studies.
By describing such period of Reclus' life, the main purpose of this paper is to draw a picture of his intellectual production and of his involvement with other anarchists of the time. Such involvement fueled the emergence of an intelligentsia of anarchist geographers that laid the foundations for the creation of the principles of communist anarchist geography.
By observing the history of geographical thought, it is possible to argue that these principles have been partially forgotten. A second exile and the involvement with anarchists In his second exile1, during which he lived in Switzerland, Reclus would go through a period marked by extensive bibliographic production. He would also resume his relations with other anarchists, including Bakunin, who resided in Zurich.
Hachette was convinced to embark on the project by the argument that the Malt-Brun Universal Geography was published over 50 years before and it was necessary to write a new one with updates, but keeping the former's encyclopedic character. The new encyclopedia would be gradually published in many short issues. The publisher, however, restricted the presence of any religious, political and social connections in the work because, even though he knew of the notoriety Reclus had 1 Reclus's life is marked by three exiles and various moments of political persecution because of his involvement with revolutionary movements, be it in , with the Paris Commune in and the I International.
This way, Reclus continued the path initiated with La Terre, which aimed at constructing an eminently anarchist geography.
Universal geography elisee reclus why anarchists
After the torturous arrest that resulted from his involvement with the Paris Commune in , he sought to mature his notion of Bakunian-based collectivist anarchism, approaching what later became known as Communist anarchism. Texts Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3.
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