Anarchist Geographies in the Rural Global South

Navé Wald and Doug Hill

Anarchy as a social philosophy has never meant 'chaos' — in fact, anarchists have typically believed in a highly organized society, just one that's organized democratically from below.

Noam Chomsky (2013: 28)

This edited volume seeks to bring to light different forms of anarchist geographies where alternative socio-spatial constellations are being constructed along ideals of horizontality, freedom and mutual aid. For Springer (2012: 1607), anarchist geographies are 'kaleidoscopic spatialities that allow for multiple, non-hierarchical, and protean connections between autonomous entities, wherein solidarities, bonds, and affinities are voluntarily assembled in opposition to and free from the presence of sovereign violence, predetermined norms, and assigned categories of belonging'. The renewed impetus to the relationship between anarchism and geography is due in part to the historical contributions of Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) and Élisée Reclus (1830–1905) around the turn of the twentieth century and to current radical geographers wishing to emphasize and study dissenting spaces where new forms of affinity and egalitarian social relations emerge, flourish and struggle.

Rural geographies that can be analysed as reflecting anarchist theoretical ideals and praxes are found across the world, many of which are related to the transnational peasant movement La Vía Campesina. Following Brincat and Aylward (2010) and Wald (2015a, 2015c), we contend that this movement, or confederation, along with its member organizations and key concept of food sovereignty, embodies a number of anarchist principles such as participatory horizontal politics and abolishing domination.

In this chapter, we depict and analyse the multi-scalar structure of a confederative organization linking together horizontal spaces of geographically and culturally diverse struggles and aspirations of rural communities and groups worldwide. Rather than focusing on a particular scale, we are interested in how such a multiscalar structure operates from the grassroots to the level of the global organization. Importantly, the practice of horizontal spaces and their scales are always situated in time and place. The examples provided here are contextualized by historical and current geographies of rapture and struggle in Argentina, a country with a rich history of anarchism, political and economic unrest. In so doing, we scrutinize the continuities from past anarchist experiences, mainly but not exclusively in the urban realm, and current anarchist-inspired practices in the countryside.

RURAL PREFIGURATIVE SPACES AND CONFEDERATIVE NETWORKS

Different theoretical propositions and actions were labelled 'anarchist' across space and time. These have sometimes encompassed conflicting tendencies, and thus it has been difficult to formulate precisely an anarchist theory of society and social change (Chomsky 2013). Thus, unlike some other political doctrines, anarchism has tended to be more heretical and diverse. Embracing these kaleidoscopic anarchic spatialities as a body of thought, anarchism converges particularly around the core principals of anti-authoritarianism and egalitarianism (Newman 2010). In fact, anarchism is usually wary of formulating grand theories and is best characterized by its methods and principles, such as autonomy, self-organization, mutual aid and direct democracy (Graeber 2004).

Within this diversity, a notably influential type of anarchism has been that of anarcho-syndicalism. This doctrine refers to a radical form of trade unionism that calls for workers' organization along anarchist principles such as self-management, autonomy and direct action. Anarcho-syndicalists were critical of other, including socialist, labour unions and saw them as mere reformists within the capitalist system, the same system anarcho-syndicalists wished to abolish. Herein, anarcho-syndicalists believed in workers' direct control over the means of production and in an organizational model based on a free and solidaric federation of syndicates (Rocker 1989 [1938]; Wilson and Kinna 2012).

For the anarchist philosopher and geographer Peter Kropotkin (1910: 914), anarchism is

the name given to a principle or theory of life and conduct under which society is conceived without government — harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded between the various groups, territorial and professional, freely constituted for the sake of production and consumption, as also for the satisfaction of the infinite variety of needs and aspirations of a civilized being. In a society developed on these lines, the voluntary associations ... would take a still greater extension so as to substitute themselves for the state in all its functions. They would represent an interwoven network, composed of an infinite variety of groups and federations of all sizes and degrees, local, regional, national and international — temporary or more or less permanent — for all possible purposes: production, consumption and exchange, communications, sanitary arrangements, education, mutual protection, defence of the territory, and so on.

This overarching definition of anarchism, written by Kropotkin for the eleventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, includes a multi-scalar vision of a free and federative society that is organized by networks of voluntary associations. A confederation of free associations was also a pivotal feature in the anarchist thoughts of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) and Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876),...