"Anarchism Now" Conference
Santa Cruz, California, Saturday, May 7, 2005

University of California, Santa Cruz
Oakes 105 / 10 AM-5:30 PM

Since the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the open-ended War
on Terror, the dominant ideologies, categories, antagonists, analyses
of power and the modes in which it is exercised have changed.
Accordingly, the theories and practices of resistance are changing as
well.

Among these, anarchism has re-emerged in the last several years as a
prominent element within radical social movements in North America
and Europe, particularly among those which aspire to act in
solidarity with those movements in Asia, Africa and Latin America
that are on the offensive against neoliberalism and U.S. imperialism.Many of these draw upon compatible traditions of local autonomy,
direct democracy, and resistance to market economies and colonizing
institutions. Meanwhile, in the global north, the organizing
practices and techniques of resistance associated with anarchism have
spread widely among activists working for social and economic
justice, including those who do not espouse an anarchist ideology.

The goal of this conference is to create a dialogue among people with
varying relationships to the academy and to activism, asking: What is
anarchism now? Why is it newly prominent in political organizing?
What are the operative principles behind the label? What conceptual
tools does it offer in dealing with race and imperialism,
globalization and class solidarity, state discipline and punish#ment,
gender and sexuality, historical and contemporary social movements?

SPEAKERS

Iain Boal, a social historian of science and technics, teaches geography at UC
Berkeley. He has spoken extensively on the concepts of enclosure,
privatization and the commons, and is the author of The Long Theft
(forthcoming, City Lights) and co-editor of Resisting the Virtual
Life (City Lights, 1995). He is also active in the Institute for the
Study of Social Change, contributing to research on social justice
movements in the Bay Area.

Arif Dirlik is Professor of History and Anthropology and Knight
Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Oregon. His books
include Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution (California, 1991);
Schools into Fields and Factories: Anarchists, the Guomindang, and
the National Labor University in Shanghai, 1927-1932 (Duke, 1991);
and After the Revolution: Waking to Global Capitalism (University
Press of New England, 1994).

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz was a founder of the feminist movement and
anti-war activist and organizer, forming associations with
revolutionaries across the spectrum of radical and underground
politics during the 1960s and 1970s. She is Professor of Ethnic and
Women's Studies at California State University, Hayward. She is the
author of The Great Sioux Nation (Moon, 1977), Indians of the
Americas (Zed, 1984), and the memoirs Red Dirt (Verso, 1997) and
Outlaw Woman (City Lights, 2001).

John Holloway is one of the best-known analysts of the Zapatista
rebellion, and the author of Change the World Without Taking Power
(Pluto Press, 2002). He has lived in Mexico for over a decade and
teaches political science at the Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y
Humanides in the Universidad Autonoma de Puebla.

Barry Pateman is Associate Editor of the Emma Goldman Papers, and has
been the project's research associate in the U.K. since 1989. A
historian, he also teaches free classes on anarchism at the Anarchist
Library at City College in San Francisco.

Eddie Yuen is the co-editor of The Battle of Seattle: The New
Challenge to Capitalist Globalization (Soft Skull, 2001) and
Confronting Capitalism (Publishers Group West, 2004). He is on the
faculty of the activism and social change program at New College of
California in San Francisco.

CoNfeREnCe SchEduLe

PANEL 1 / 10 AM-12 PM
Featuring: Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Barry Pateman, Eddie Yuen
Roots of Radicalism in the US: Anarchism and Anarcho-syndicalism
The USA: A State Born with the Assumption of Empire

12-1 PM Lunch

PANEL 2 / 1-3:30 PM
Featuring: Iain Boal, Arif Dirlik, John Holloway
Anarchism in an Epoch of Military Neo-liberalism
Changing the World without Taking Power: Anti-state/Anti-capitalist Politics

3:30-5 PM Break-out Sessions

5-5:30 PM Concluding Discussion

Sponsored by the Anarchism Research Cluster