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anarchism |
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A political philosophy which advocates elimination of the state and its replacement by voluntary groups of individuals who can sustain social order without any external authority. Such a social order may emphasize either individualism (and thus is a logical conclusion of liberalism, stressing the importance of individual liberty) or socialism (some versions of which reject private property as well as the state): Cook (1990) identified five different forms of anarchism — individualism; collectivism; anarchist communism; anarcho-syndicalism; and pacifism.
The early proponents of anarchist communism included Peter Kropotkin and Elisée Reclus, whose geographical writings (especially Kropotkin\' s) were rediscovered by some of the early advocates of radical geography: a special issue of the journal Antipode promoted the anarcho-communist cause, stressing \'the essential interdependence of personal autonomy and community\' (Breitbart, 1979, p. 1). In his seminal essay, \'What geography ought to be\' (reprinted in that issue of Antipode), Kropotkin argues that its role in early childhood was \'to interest the child in the great phenomena of nature, to awaken the desire of knowing and explaining them\', but geography\'s task more generally was to \'teach us, from our earliest childhood, that we are all brethren, whatever our nationality … geography must be … a means of dissipating … prejudices and creating other feelings more worthy of humanity\'. Peet (1979) built on this by promoting a \'geography of human liberation\' in which \'people are free to collectively make of themselves what they want within the limit of not damaging others … [which] can come only from controlling their own means of production based on their own piece of earth environment\' with the latter involving \'an advance to scientific, creative humans in nature\'. Elsewhere, he argued that \'Anarchism implies a decentralized spatial arrangement of production and people, because the individual can only fully develop in a close community of others\' (Peet, 1977, p. 24): there was little further interest, however, and a decade later Peet (in Peet and Thrift, 1989, p. 7) saw the late 1970s writings on this anarchism as \'the last bursts of colour in the fall of 1960s-style radicalism\' — from then on radical geography became \'more sober\'. (RJJ)
References and Suggested Reading Breitbart, M. 1979: Introduction. Antipode 10 (3): 1-5. Breitbart, M. 1981: Peter Kropotkin, the anarchist geographer. In D.R. Stoddart, ed., Geography, ideology and social concern. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 134-53. Cook, I. 1990: Anarchistic alter natives: an introduction. In I. Cook and D. Pepper, eds, Anarchism and geography. Contemporary issues in geography and education. 3 (2): 9-21. Peet, R. 1977: The development of radical geography in the United States. In R. Peet, ed., Radical geography: alternative viewpoints on contemporary social issues. London: Methuen, 6-31. Peet, R. 1979: The geography of human liberation. Antipode 10 (3): 119-34. Peet, R. and Thrift, N.J. 1989: Political economy and human geography. In R. Peet and J. Thrift, eds, New models in geography: the political economy perspective, volume one. London: Methuen, 3-29. Stoddart, D.R. 1975: Kropotkin, Reclus and \'relevant\' geography. Area 7: 180-9 0. |
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