The Anarchist Essays #podcast from @arglboro brings together people working in the diverse area of #AnarchistStudies (check out their extensive back catalog!) I've done an essay for their latest episode focused on the ways that #anarchism and #sociology overlap (and don't). It's a distillation of quite a few years of writing and thinking about the topic. Enjoy...
Essay #96: Dana Williams, ‘Concerning Anarchist Sociology: Working Within and Against Discipline’
This essay examines the rise of 'direct action' as a key concept in anarchist and radical politics over the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It traces the transnational arguments, texts and networks that made this possible. Sean Scalmer is a Professor of History at the University of Melbourne. This essay is a greatly edited version of a recent article: 'Direct Action: Invention of a Transnational Concept', International Review of Social History, vol. 68, no. 3, December 2023, pp.357-87. (An open access version is here).The research and the essay forms part of a research project on 'Direct Action and Democracy: Utopia, Experience, Threat', funded by the Gerda Henkel Stiftung. Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group and the journal Anarchist Studies. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro. Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns). Artwork by Sam G.
The pioneering French #AnarchistStudies scholar and sociologist Ronald Creagh has died at 94. I got a chance to "meet" him via Skype at the 2015 #NAASN conference, and years later he was kind enough to answer my questions about #sociology and #anarchism. Rest in power, Ronald!
I recently finished Martha Ackelsberg's book "Free Women of Spain: Anarchism and the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women" about the Mujeres Libres organization during the Spanish Revolution. It might be one of the most impressive explorations of what came to be anarcha-feminism (even though ML rejected the "feminism" label).
They organized against "ignorance, capitalism, and women's subordination", within the anarchist movement and among the working classes.
Alexandre Christoyannopoulos
Dana Williams
@patadeperro 🐈⬛ 
Jesse Cohn