Beyond the state: Anthropology and ‘actually-existing-anarchism’

Abstract

In this article we seek to explore the different ways in which anarchists use anthropological materials for the purpose of advancing the anarchist cause. We note the extensive deployment of such materials within anarchist texts and identify four generative functions that they play within them. They include, respectively, the generation of critique, the generation of techniques for sustaining stateless relations, the generation of reflexivity and the generation of solidarity. The delineation of these functions demonstrates that anarchism is misunderstood as principally or exclusively a transformative ideology like socialism or Marxism. Rather, anarchists set great store by pointing to the existence of anarchist practices, anarchist groupings and particularly anarchist societies and communities that might embrace a different, cooperative social logic. Anthropology is particularly useful in this respect as anthropologists have provided a reservoir of evidence confirming not just the possibility of anarchism, but its existence albeit in the often precarious and marginal folds of the global system.